Moving to Hawaii can make you less racist — study
HONOLULU — A new study by researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa suggests that moving to Hawaii can make a person less racist.
The study, “The Role of Diversity Exposure In Race Essentialism Over Time,” was first published online in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Ninety-nine students who identified as white and had been living in Hawaii less than a week filled out an initial questionnaire for the research. Nine months later, the same students took the same survey. Over the period, their answers had changed.
“The thing that changed the most was their ideas about race as a category,” said University of Hawaii associate professor of psychology Kristin Pauker, who headed up the study. “I think there is something unique about being in an environment where everywhere you look you see someone who doesn’t necessarily look like you.”
Over the course of the school year, the study found, the ethnicity of other people became less important to many of the study participants.
