Recategorization
[4] This model is predated and supported by Tajfel and Turner's social identity theory, which describes how people consider ingroups and outgroups differently and seek positive distinctiveness for their ingroup, as well as self-categorization theory, which states that group membership is mutable and people categorize themselves based on the fit and accessibility of different groups.
[9][10][11] In essence, recategorization can be achieved by increasing the fit and accessibility of the common ingroup identity, and successful recategorization reduces a bias difference between groups by using a superordinate identity to extend ingroup favoritism towards former outgroups.
[citation needed] It is hypothesized that certain factors can facilitate the creation of a common ingroup identity.
Initially, Gordon Allport proposed four necessary conditions for this to occur: equal status, common goals, intergroup cooperation, and support of authorities, laws, or customs.
[3] To this, Pettigrew later added a fifth condition: friendship potential, that the contact must provide opportunity for individuals in each group to become friends.
[5] In the third stage, after sufficient positive perceptions have been built, categorizations of "us" and "them" can merge into a collective "we" that encompasses both original groups.
[12] Alternatively, some degree of recategorization may be achieved when individuals are led to believe that they share immutable traits with an outgroup.
[2] However, dual-identity recategorization also faces a unique difficulties that can inflame, rather than abate, intergroup tensions (see below).
[2][3] Many of the same factors that make it difficult to achieve successful recategorization also threaten to reverse the process.
As before, dual-identity recategorization has the advantage that the superordinate category introduced or made salient by recategorization does not oppose preexisting identities, but it still may be overcome if it is unsupported while its component subgroup identities are reinforced; in time, it may lose enough salience to become irrelevant.
[2] When the positive distinctiveness of a group is threatened by single-identity recategorization, the identity threat felt by high-identifying group members may oppose a superordinate identity enough that they heighten their bias towards outgroups in order to reassert positive distinctiveness; in this way, attempting recategorization may actually increase intergroup bias.
[17] While the fact that dual-identity recategorization enables subgroup and superordinate identities to be salient simultaneously is often to its advantage, it can also reinforce intergroup hostility in unique ways.
Reducing identification with original group identities, which can occur in both types of recategorization, has potentially undesirable effects as well.
[19] An important application of recategorization is in understanding how groups combine, change, and come into conflict in the world.
To this end, recategorization has been applied to a range of topics including corporate board appointments,[20] foundational studies in social psychology,[12] and attitude shifts in Zanzibari politics.
[23] However, some studies of recategorization interventions have failed to demonstrate a significant effect on prejudice or discrimination.
[6] The most common position was between those extremes, with many Rwandans expressing support for the goals of recategorization policy but criticizing the means by which it is enforced or the breadth of the restrictions on speech.
