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The most useful change is often to make a former outgroup part of an inclusive “we” while preserving a secure subgroup identity; no category arrangement is best independently of context and outcome. Prejudice is an evaluative attitude toward people because of group membership, stereotypes concern attributed group characteristics, and discrimination concerns treatment. A reduction in liking differences between small laboratory groups is therefore evidence about one component of prejudice, not automatically about durable equality in behavior.

Social categorization establishes who counts as an ingroup or outgroup. If favorable treatment follows the ingroup boundary, changing that boundary can extend favorable treatment to people previously excluded. But categorization also supports recognition, continuity and shared experience. Erasing a socially meaningful identity may threaten the very people an intervention is intended to include. The best test therefore asks both whether the new representation improves attitudes and whether it preserves enough identity for its benefits to generalize beyond the immediate encounter.

Decategorization encourages seeing an interaction partner as a distinctive person rather than merely an outgroup representative. It can weaken reliance on a stereotype and make personal information available. Its weakness is transfer: a liked individual may be treated as an exception while prejudice toward the broader outgroup remains unchanged. It is therefore most convincing when participants later respond more fairly to unfamiliar outgroup members, not merely when they like the person they just met. Individuation is a useful part of contact, but it need not supply a new inclusive group boundary.

Recategorization instead makes a common superordinate category salient. In the common ingroup identity model, the former outgroup is represented as part of a larger ingroup. Samuel L. Gaertner and colleagues experimentally compared ways of representing interacting participants, including one-group, two-group and individualized arrangements. The results supported a benefit of an inclusive group representation. This is a causal test of a manipulated social arrangement, although the arrangement may change cooperation and expectations together with perceived membership.^[ref]

The distinction between labels and social structure matters. Simply giving participants a common name need not change their expectations about how others will treat them. Shared tasks, balanced interaction and a credible common goal can make the inclusive identity psychologically meaningful. Conversely, if the “common” category is implicitly defined by the dominant subgroup's norms, minorities may experience it as an instruction to assimilate. A successful intervention must therefore assess whose identity is being recognized, rather than taking average category salience as a sufficient explanation.

John F. Dovidio and colleagues extended the experimental evidence beyond evaluations. After forming two three-person groups, they manipulated an inclusive versus separated representation and measured evaluations, self-disclosure and helping. The inclusive arrangement produced more favorable intergroup responses, with perceived group unity statistically accounting for part of the pattern. Helping is a stronger behavioral extension than an attitude rating alone. However, statistical mediation does not itself prove that perceived unity was the uniquely causal mediator: the manipulation could change additional processes alongside it.^[ref]

Dual identity retains the subgroups within the inclusive category. Participants can represent themselves as members of distinct departments within one university, for example. This can combine a shared membership with recognition of meaningful difference. It may also preserve the connection between a positive encounter and the original outgroup, helping the benefit transfer beyond a single partner. The proposal is conditional: constantly emphasizing a hostile division without a credible common category could reinforce the boundary rather than soften it.

Matthew J. Hornsey and colleagues tested subgroup and superordinate-category salience in two university-based experiments, with 178 and 135 participants. Bias was lowest when both identities were salient and highest when the superordinate category alone was emphasized. The design is a useful challenge to an unconditional recommendation to erase subgroups. Its theoretical implication is that an inclusive representation can work better when it accommodates distinctiveness. The precise ordering still needs to be evaluated in the population and relationships being studied.^[ref]

Crossed categorization offers another possibility: someone may be an outgroup member on one dimension but an ingroup member on another. This weakens a perfectly aligned “us versus them” division when the shared dimension is valued. It does not guarantee inclusion, because people can prioritize one division or reserve the strongest exclusion for those who share neither membership. Thus the number of visible categories is less important than how they organize expected similarity, belonging and cooperation. Which categorization works best must be an empirical question about those relationships.

Intergroup contact provides a wider evidential context. Thomas F. Pettigrew and colleagues' meta-analysis of 515 studies and 713 independent samples found that contact generally related to lower prejudice, with supportive conditions such as equal status and cooperation enhancing the relationship. This broadens the evidence beyond a single laboratory manipulation. It does not rank categorization strategies directly, and much contact is assessed in observational studies: less prejudiced people may seek it out. Contact can supply an opportunity for category change without establishing that category change alone produced every improvement.^[ref]

A strong comparison would assign otherwise similar cooperative encounters to decategorization, common identity and dual identity conditions. It would measure perceived inclusion and identity threat, then test attitudes and consequential treatment of unfamiliar group members after a delay. Separate subgroup analyses would reveal whether an apparent average benefit concealed a cost to the less powerful subgroup. These measurements make “works best” refer to generalization, persistence and behavior rather than to an immediate favorable rating.

An inclusive identity that preserves legitimate subgroup distinctiveness is a well-supported candidate, especially where identity threat would undermine simple assimilation. Decategorization and crossed categorization remain useful under appropriate conditions. The evidence favors changing how membership supports inclusion, with cooperative and equitable interaction, rather than expecting a verbal relabeling to remove prejudice on its own.