Recategorization: An Approach to Extending the Symbolic Benefits of Bureaucratic Representation to the Majority Group

Abstract

Research has argued that the symbolic benefits of bureaucratic representation for marginalized social groups may come at the expense of the attitudes of the majority group. In this study, we investigate whether recategorization—that is, reframing previously separate groups as an inclusive common ingroup—can shift the majority group's perception of bureaucratic representation from a threat to a benefit. We conducted two vignette experiments with a representative sample of U.S. adults ( n = 1,040), in which we tested the same treatments in two policy domains: policing and healthcare. The results support our main hypothesis in the policing context. The effect of police chiefs’ race being African American on white respondents’ trust in the chief shifted from negative to positive when the chiefs portrayed African Americans discriminated by the police as members of American community, a superordinate common ingroup that encompasses every race, rather than simply as African Americans.