Information About the Game
What is Diversico?
Diversico is an engaging, discussion-based card game designed for 4-6 players, helping people explore the value of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
Through collaboration and discussion, Diversico aims to highlight and challenge widely held stereotypes and allow individuals to appreciate the value that diversity brings to teams. Suitable for people from a wide range of backgrounds, Diversico requires no prior knowledge of diversity or inclusion topics and can be played as a standalone activity or integrated into wider training sessions.
It moves enhances diversity training by encouraging players to learn through interaction and shared experiences, by providing a safe and enjoyable environment to discuss individual differences and challenge societal assumptions.
Questioning our preconceptions may be a little uncomfortable at times, but it helps to broaden our scope of thinking and engage in these inclusive processes in our daily lives.
How to Play
Diversico uses two decks: Person cards and Profession cards. Each round, one player — the Chooser — turns over a Person card for everyone to see. The other players secretly play a Profession card from their hand to create the most counter-stereotypical pairing they can: the combination that most upends a common assumption about who does what. The Chooser reveals the pairings and picks a winner — whoever turned a stereotype on its head most effectively takes the round and keeps the Person card as their point. The Chooser role rotates, so everyone judges and everyone plays; most cards when the deck runs out wins.
For example: [Eighty-Year-Old Man] + [Fashion Designer] or [Posh Woman] + [Plumber]
A game takes around 10-minutes with 4–6 players, and there’s nothing to facilitate — the rules take a minute to learn. Running a bigger workshop? Split into tables with a deck each!
The Research Behind Diversico
Research conducted by psychologists at Durham University shows that exposure to diversity can have wide-ranging benefits – it can make people more creative, more resilient and better at problem solving. Think of Diversico as a workout for your brain!
Psychologists call this cognitive liberalisation: engaging with difference doesn’t just shift specific attitudes, it loosens rigid thinking more generally.”
Our goals in creating Diversico are to:
- Promote meaningful conversations about diversity and inclusion.
- Help participants recognise the strengths that different perspectives bring to teams.
- Encourage empathy, curiosity and open-mindedness.
- Support organisations to create a more inclusive workplace.
- Provide an enjoyable, evidence-informed resource to encourage open conversations.
The Evidence
Crisp, R. J., & Turner, R. N. (2011). Cognitive adaptation to the experience of social and cultural diversity. Psychological Bulletin, 137(2), 242–266. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021840
Hamzah, H. A., Marcinko, A. J., Stephens, B., & Weick, M. (2025). Making soft skills ‘stick’: A systematic scoping review and integrated training transfer framework grounded in behavioural science. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2024.2376909
Meleady, R., Crisp, R. J., Dhont, K., Hopthrow, T., & Turner, R. N. (2020). Intergroup contact, social dominance, and environmental concern: A test of the cognitive-liberalization hypothesis. Journal of personality and social psychology, 118(6), 1146–1164. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000196
Who can use Diversico?
Diversico has been designed to be flexible and can be used in a range of settings.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Training
It provides an interactive element to EDI training by encouraging participants to actively engage with the concepts of diversity, inclusion and teamwork. The game could work well as an icebreaker, discussion activity or reflective exercise.
Team-Building Workshops
Individuals and teams benefit from exploring how different perspectives contribute to collaboration. Diversico helps foster communication and diverse ways of thinking by strengthening workplace relationships.
Schools, Colleges and Universities
The game is also suitable for adolescents, older students and young adults, by offering an accessible introduction to diversity and inclusion. It can support a range of academic programmes by encouraging respectful discussions and collaborative learning.
Professional Development
Diversico is ideal for personal and leadership development in any sector. Play as part of an EDI training, with charity volunteers or community facing groups. It works with any team interested in promoting inclusive working practices and open-mindedness.
Meet the Creators
Dr Andrew Marcinko
Andrew is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Durham University and Director of Professional Education in Behavioural Science. His research examines how organisations close the gap between their stated values and everyday practice, with a particular focus on equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) programmes. Beyond academia, he is an experienced executive trainer and consultant, and has worked with organisations around the world — including Panasonic, NatWest, Jacobs, the United Nations, NASA, and the Army Research Laboratory — to apply behavioural science to real-world challenges.
Professor Richard Crisp
Richard is Professor of Behavioural Science at Durham University and a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellow. His research on intergroup relations includes the imagined contact hypothesis — the idea that simply imagining positive contact with other groups can shift attitudes — and the model of cognitive growth through diversity experience that underpins Diversico. This work spans over 150 papers in journals including Psychological Bulletin and Science. Richard is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology and author of the popular science book The Social Brain: How Diversity Made the Modern Mind.
Together, they designed Diversico to bring this research to life: a hands-on way for teams to experience how engaging with difference can open up thinking.