This study aims to discover the complimented recipient’s use of membership categorization devices as a resource serving to avoid self-praise. From a conversation analytic perspective, we analyze CNN interview data in which both the interviewer and the interviewee have their commonsense understanding of membership categorization devices and organize their talk. Based on Pomerantz’s (1978) preemptive study on self-praise avoidance, we proceed to see which kinds of referent are used for complimented recipients to avoid self-praise. This paper emphasizes that the complimented recipients widely use membership categorization devices or membership categories when they want to shift the referent against self-praise. The analyzed data show three notable conversational patterns in the use of membership categorization devices as a resource for referent-shift: (1) interviewer’s category-implied question and interviewee’s category work, (2) interviewer’s indirect compliment and interviewee’s explicit category use, and (3) interviewer’s compliment and interviewee’s category-related storytelling. In addition to the contribution to the study on self-praise avoidance, this study is intended to encourage more investigations of various actions associated with membership categorization devices.