The Pauker study that was mentioned in Velasquez-Manoff’s article “Want to be less Racist? Move to Hawaii.” focused on the idea of essentialist views being presented in children from ages four to eleven in two completely different environments. Pauker looked to test her hypothesis with a sample group from Massachusetts and another sample group from Hawaii in which there were a total of 136 children total. (Pauker et. al) Broken down, The sample consisted of children 4–11 years of age, with 68 children from Hawai’i (37 boys, 31 girls; Mage = 6.73, SD = 1.94) and 68 children from Massachusetts (38 boys, 30 girls; Mage = 6.40, SD = 1.78). (Pauker et. al) These essentialist views that were spoken about were code for racial stereotyping, racial stereotyping being making assumptions about one based on their race or ethnicity. The idea was to figure out when they began to show signs of these views forming.
What was found was that these racial stereotypical views began to occur primarily in children that were sampled in Massachusetts, of which should be acknowledged, were primarily white. They happened to express stereotyped views such as, “that blacks were aggressive or, on the flip side, good at basketball; that Asians were submissive and good at math.” (Velasquez-Manoff) Meanwhile in Hawaii, ” the children, including those who were white, tended not to express the same essentialist ideas about race.” Along with, “they did not attribute to race the inherent qualities — aggression or book smarts — that their mainland brethren did.” (Velasquez-Manoff) In order to find this, they had “Children completed measures assessing race salience, race essentialism, and in-group and out-group stereotyping” (Pauker et. al)
Pauker had predicted the results that had occurred, with her hypothesis explaining, “Whites dominated in the Boston area schools, but were a minority in Hawaii, and always had been. Hawaii also had the highest percentage of mixed-race people by a long shot in the country.” (Velasquez-Manoff) So the results of her study weren’t a complete surprise to her when they got the results. She essentially found that where white’s were a majority, they tended to hold a more essentialist view. Compared to in Hawaii where people who are “mixed” are the majority, which has been cause for more inclusivity and less focused on attributing “behaviors” to ethnicity.
