Crossed categories reduce in-group bias and dependence on single identities

Evidence

In the context of multiple crossed categories, this general tendency to minimize differences within but maximize differences between categories should be reduced or even eliminated, given that individuals rely on more complex category combinations. Moreover, when multiple categories are salient, individuals are thought to rely less on single in-groups for bolstering self-evaluation and self-esteem 82 • Katharina Schmid and Miles Hewstone (see Vanbeselaere, 1991) or satisfying opposing needs for assimilation and differentiation (Brewer, 1991; see also Leonardelli, Pickett, Joseph, & Hess, Chapter 6, this book; we return to a more detailed description of optimal distinctiveness theory at a later point in this chapter). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 530

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to crossed-categorization theory in prejudice research and to the earlier claims about in-group bias attenuation. — connects to: Unitary categories like race and class fray at the edges under sustained analysis — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 354; Multiple subordinated identities compound into more than additive subordination. — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 72; the MOC “The False Compass: How Racial Categories Reorder Bodies, Minds, and the Self”