We looked at race in one of our very first posts, and today I’d like to revisit the topic with fresh data. This article folds in millions of person-to-person interactions, what one human being thinks of another. As such, it’s different from a look at, say, unemployment numbers or test scores. So much data on race gives you people vs. the system. OkCupid’s gives you people vs. people. Basically, the site’s ten-year history has been one long episode of Judge Judy. Here’s the verdict on race.
Way Back in 2009
Five years ago, the basics of race and attraction on OkCupid looked like this:
– non-black men applied a penalty to black women
– while black men showed little racial preference either way
women
– all women preferred men of their own race
– but they otherwise penalized both Asian and black men
Here’s how the exact person-to-person numbers shook out:
The values in these tables are “preference vs. the average.” Think of them as how people weigh race in deciding attraction. So, for example, in the bottom-right corner of the lower table, you see that white women think white men are 17% more attractive than the average guy. Move one square to the left, and you see that they think Latinos are 1% above average, and so on.
The color is there to make the big trends easy to see.
Has Anything Changed?
In some ways, no. OkCupid users are certainly no more open-minded than they used to be. If anything, racial bias has intensified a bit. Here are the numbers for 2009 till now—use the slider to move through time. Like a javascript DeLorean.
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
These numbers reflect different people year-to-year. Together the charts fold in data from some 25 million accounts.
One interesting thing is to compare what you see above with what those same users have told us about their racial attitudes. Answers to match questions have been getting significantly less biased over time:
And yet the underlying behavior has stayed the same.
You can use other online data to see this split personality play out elsewhere. The night Obama was first elected was a moment of catharsis. It really felt like something had changed about the way America perceived and thought about race, and for at least that brief moment, the nation appeared united. No less than Karl Rove captured the moment well: “an African-American candidate who was aspirational and inspirational…is very powerful. It’s a night for our country to celebrate, and for the world to celebrate.”
Meanwhile, that same evening, American Google Searches for the word “nigger” hit an all-time high.†
Anyhow, whenever I talk about this data (or the race data in my book, Dataclysm) a few questions always seem to come up. So I figured I’d just answer them head-on here.
Q: Are people on OkCupid just racist?
No. I mean, not any more than anywhere else. All the dating data I’ve seen fits OkCupid’s pattern: black people and Asian men get short shrift. For example, below are the numbers from DateHookup, a site that we acquired a few years ago (but that still operates independently.) DateHookup has a distinct userbase, a distinct user acquisition model, a distinct interface, yet their data reflects the same basic biases:
While OkCupid is large enough that its demographics reflect the general Internet-using public, DateHookup is a niche site particularly popular with Latinos and blacks (those groups comprise 13% and 20% of the site, respectively.) Other sites in our portfolio, with still different demographics and business models, show the same attraction patterns.
Q: Is it possible that some small number of users is throwing off the averages?
These biases are pervasive in the data I’ve seen. For example, 82% of non-black men on OkCupid show some bias against black women. And, similarly, it’s not outliers among the women driving the results. It’s a wholesale phenomenon: the ratings for an entire population are shifted down.
Q: Are you saying that because I prefer to date [whatever race], I’m a racist?
On an individual level, a person can’t really control who turns them on—and almost everyone has a “type,” one way or another. But I do think the trend—that fact that race is a sexual factor for so many individuals, and in such a consistent way—says something about race’s role in our society. See below.
Q: All this data is from a dating site. What does that have to do with my life?
There are many situations that might not be explicitly romantic, but are nonetheless a lot like a first date. A job interview. Trying to rent an apartment. When you meet your freshman roommates. Anytime you’re trying to make an impression on a stranger. And science has long known that bonuses accrue to beautiful people: they have better outcomes at work and at school, more success with juries, even live longer lives, and so on. In short, “beautiful people” receive a lot of the same built-in benefits in our society that white people do.
I think that’s no coincidence. Beauty is a cultural idea as much as a physical one, and the standard is of course set by the dominant culture. I believe that’s what you see in the data here. One interesting thing about OkCupid’s interface is that we allow people to select more than one race, so you can actually look at people who’ve combined “white” with another racial description. Adding “whiteness” always helps your rating! In fact it goes a long way towards undoing any bias against you.

So, yes, this is all just dating data, but it shows who and what we define as beautiful. And that’s something that affects everyone.
For the folks who think this data is skewed or biased, that it should account for attractiveness or body type, I disagree and here’s why:
This data is not from a subset of users – it’s across the board. So, men’s ratings of women includes all types of women in each racial category: heavy black women and thin black women, heavy white women and thin white women, ‘attractive’ latina women and ‘unattractive’ latina women, etc. That normalizes the data – no weighting necessary…so to speak…
THIS SEEMS LIKE A POOR STUDY ON YOUR PART.
This result seems really odd, because of how much more race-exclusive all groups have gotten. It signifies the possibility that you have tampered with your data. Because interracial dating and marriage have risen in the USA, but your results indicate that it should be otherwise.
So, how exactly USA-focused is this data? Is the collection sample still the same as 5 years ago (seems unlikely), or does it include more countries than before?
Considering how dominant Latinas are in winning global beauty pageants, along with other indicators that rate them highly, I’m surprised they don’t do much better. I’ve seen other studies showing they are extremely popular with all men.
Unsurprisingly white women have lost popularity across the board. At least that is consistent with other USA-focused studies on their loss as desirable partners.
Even if this study was only done using “Quick-Match” in an electronic environment that may be biased towards “cruising for a better deal*” (and less authentic?) much more than would be meeting folks in person, it is quite frightening/horrifying to see such how much more strongly negative opinions appear to be against black women.
(See “The Lonely American”, Olds & Schwartz, pg 109-110: “Online dating kicks the ‘Flaw-O-Matic’ into high gear.”)
Does the “intense and superficial” nature of technology itself bring out the worst in people?
Beauty may be “in the eye of the beholder,” but it is both frightening and amazing how easily the beholder can be brainwashed.
LOL, this is clearly bad data. There’s no way people are more racist in their dating preferences than 5 years ago. This goes against all the other data out there.
This OK Cupid study has definitely tampered with their data selection pool. Go back to Statistics 101.
Please throw up same sex stats! Also, if you could get around to making the site more user friendly for non-cis users, that would be hot, too! (Then you can collect stats on them, too!)
People need to stop being pissed off by the truth.
Once again, I don’t even exist to some people. Or is this study lumping in Indian men with Asians, or Indians with Blacks?? FFS okcupid you have Indian as a category in your own database, why not use it??
Interesting data. Do you think you could do something similar for same-sex matches?
Interesting. Looking at the underlying data for 2014…
Asian men like asian women a lot, latino men like latino women a lot, and white man like white women a lot.
Black men aren’t fussed by black women and everybody else really doesn’t like black women.
Black men _really_ don’t like white women.
So following the logic black men are a little racist against black women, and really racist against white women.
Everybody else is racist against black women.
Interesting.
This issue is about more than just fitting a certain beauty standard or not fitting a certain beauty standard.
A person who fits the dominant culture’s beauty standard but doesn’t belong to the dominant race is ignored because they’re perceived as something of an ego threat to members of the dominant culture.
Additionally, any person who thinks race is “a type” is racist by definition.
The study might show that white people find blacks on average less attractive than those of their own race, but I don’t think it clinches the point they’re hypocritical in answering the question, ‘do you strongly prefer to date someone of your own race?’
This question could be interpreted to mean, ‘do you only want to date someone of your own race? or ‘would it bother you to date someone of a different race?’ The answer to that question could be legitimately ‘no’, while at the same time someone could find themselves consistently pairing up with people of similar cultural backgrounds–educationally, in class terms, professionally and with respect to income and race.
The question ‘do you think that on average you find people of your own race more attractive?’ might elicit responses that show a better fit with people’s behaviour as captured by their QuickMatch scores.
Another point is that I don’t give QuickMatch scores only on the basis of how attractive I find someone. I’m giving a rate to how interesting they seem, how well they’ve presented themselves and also how likely they are to have something in common with me.
Can everyone please stop saying this guy is lying or doesn’t have perfect data? He doesn’t claim it, he notes everything. The only agenda he might have is to sell his book. Big deal…
also please stop using your personal ‘anecdotal’ experiences to discredit (any) stats, now THAT’S stupid!
YOU GUYS IN THE COMMENTS ARE SO STUPID.
“This is racist” That’s racist” “Your data’s wrong”
Idiots.
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There’s this comment: “LOL, this is clearly bad data. There’s no way people are more racist in their dating preferences than 5 years ago. This goes against all the other data out there.”
You have no idea what you are talking about. It may seem like society is getting more accepting, but I have long contended that this is not the case with dating.
For me, there are two glaring issues that I have observed, which are confirmed by this analysis:
1. Black women get the short end of the stick, as a result of the standards of beauty that have been defined by the dominant culture.
2. Asian women are VERY RACIST in their dating. I have always noted that Asian women will bend over backward to get a white man’s attention, they will settle for the Asian man, but will not ever consider a black man. Of course, this does not apply to all Asian Americans (For example, those of Japanese and Korean decent seem more open).
Any chance we could see the statistics on LGBT people and race?
“LOL, this is clearly bad data. There’s no way people are more racist in their dating preferences than 5 years ago. This goes against all the other data out there.”
It’s not that people are less racist these days, it’s that today the popular belief is that people are SUPPOSED to be accepting of everyone, their beliefs, their orientation, their race, etc.
So in surveys people will say they are accepting of other races (or in okc’s questions they’ll say interracial dating is not a bad idea).. but that’s all talk – they want to be perceived as an accepting person lest they be persecuted. But deep down no one is any less racist than they were 5 yrs ago, the actions prove that. Trust me, as an Asian dude I sense the bias from women, clients, waiters/waitresses, strangers, etc whenever I’m with a white friend or coworker – watch their eyes, they’ll make eye contact with the white dude the majority of the time.
Women are racist. Shocker.
Calling someone an involuntary bigot for preferring the appearance of Europeans over Aborigines, for example, is tantamount to calling someone a “sexist” for preferring the opposite sex, or an “ageist” for being repulsed by centenarians. I think you’ll find broad agreement that Aborigines are hopelessly ugly, but that doesn’t imply we hate them. Likewise for centenarians.
Male brains are attracted to cues for fertility and configuration takes place within the womb. Occasionally, for reasons not fully understood, this process is disrupted resulting in “female-like” sexual preferences: homosexuality. To argue in favour of cultural determinism in respect to sexual preferences and attraction could be construed as giving tacit approval to the efficacy of conversion therapy, at least in principle.
With females, the standard of beauty isn’t set culturally. On the contrary, the aspects of female beauty are immutable and strongly consistent. The Japanese, Koreans, Hindus and Arabs, to name a few groups, have lusted over a fair complexion before coming into significant contact with Europeans. This is reflected in their writing and their art.
Why not pick on black women for hating everyone but black men? Thankfully, black women received the short end of the “attraction stick” and we don’t bother with most of them.
Wow John, that was a little harsh. I can understand that you are very much unattracted to black women(as per the tone of your response) but was the “thankfully” really necessary? Contrary to what you make think, black women are human beings with feelings and emotions and we are not creatures that you can “thankfully” be unattracted to and be thankful we got the short end of the “attractive stick”. Yikes, dude. Why are you so thankful about it? What have black women done to you to illicit your vitriol?
So today we learned that Asian women are the new negro bedwenchs?
I would love to see if this has been controlled for class, or if it would otherwise be possible to disentangle the two. Can you match on class to see if the numbers change? Or match percentage and race? Do people show more variation in their willingness to date outside their own racial group if other factors are more equal?
So when are you going to study same-sex couples to the same extent you study opposite-sex couples?
From the text:
“Q: Are you saying that because I prefer to date [whatever race], I’m a racist?
No.
. . .
. . . ”
For someone who’s NOT saying that a limited set of racial dating preferences make someone a racist, YOU SURE ARE SAYING IT.
(Just read what you actually wrote, in toto.)
Or, here’s what you said in your book, verbatim:
“The data we see in this chapter shows racism isn’t a problem of outliers, It is pervasive.”
Apparently it never occurred to you that people are (statistically speaking) biologically attracted to the first people they experienced love from: their closest relatives. Who — in most cases — have similar skin coloration.
Are you *sure* you went to Harvard?
I think LGBT statistics would be quite interesting, considering this group is slightly more open-minded to begin with. Slightly. Would be nice to see how much “society’s standards of beauty” impact dating trends with this group versus hetero daters.
It’s just a fact that everyone gets to decide for themselves who they are associating with on such a personal level.
Your liberalism does not extend into your bedroom or mine. How egalitarian do personal relationships need to be? They don’t.
Lots of people want to date within their own race. Marry within their own race. It’s just fine.
Some Jewish people might date non Jewish people but *many* would never consider marrying or having children with non Jews. They might not admit it, but it’s just the facts.
Lots of white people wouldn’t consider dating blacks. The rest of the research bears analysis. But just face facts here. Many people have race preference when they consider getting personal with another person, getting naked. It’s just the way it is, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing at all.
Why call it racial bias? People are attracted to people like themselves, with friendships and love. Maybe your study just confirms that how people naturally behave is normal and nothing to be ashamed of. And it goes beyond race of course. Musicians are friends with other musicians, athletes with athletes, etc. Freedom of choice is a good thing in my opinion.
Maybe the only bias is in your team calling the results ‘biased’?
I keep reading the comments because this is such a topic of interest to me. A lot of people saying the information gathered is wrong. I say to those people, what rock are you living under. This is so accurate and it’s unfortunate and saddening.
“Racial Preference” a thing that technically isn’t even a REAL thing is crazy to me. The underlying issue is the inability to see people for PEOPLE and not a media portrayed stereotype or as some sub standard social class who automatically takes you down a level because you’re attracted to them.
This information is NOT wrong or set to make any particular race look bad it’s facts. (As a whole) if you didn’t think white women were the most unwilling to step out of their social, racial, or economical box you must be crazy. I’ve always said white women and black women are the most unwilling to step outside their boxes… This only further proves that.
Now the black man straying away from the black woman is a different story for a different time…. I could write a book on that.
A very interesting post indeed. I’m always disheartened to read these statistics (particularly because, as a black woman, I am apparently the least desirable), but I think they are important none-the-less.
I live in NYC, and wonder what the statistics for interracial attraction/ dating look like for this region. It’s always seemed like Brooklyn is made up of a large number of mixed-race couples (black women/ white men).
Also, as an atheist black woman who graduated from one of the top-ten universities in the U.S. (I know, university rankings shouldn’t matter), I find that most of the messages I receive are from educated white men. It’s a bit frustrating though because, to be honest, I’m mostly attracted to Asian men.
It is pointless to go to a vegetarian restaurant & ask for a plate of exclusive exotic game bush-meat., just as it is pointless to complain about the predictable reply you will get.
Ergo… just go to a same sex website for the data you desire in a similar study.
Otherwise, why not just ask for a Delorean while you’re here? It will serve the same pointless purpose & get the same pointless results of futility.
…and it is just as likely that someone who is non-xtian will prefer to be with someone who is also not an xtian— disregarding skin color altogether since non-affiliation with a cult is more important than a false claim that there is any other race than the Human Race.
…just as it is highly probable that a 420 person will want to be with a non-420 person…….. and in that consideration, completely disregard skin color since they have weighted something of actual importance to them higher than something they couldn’t give a flying factoid about.
It really doesn’t matter if you want the data to reflect non-hetero and non-American findings. This is an American website whose functionary concern is primarily American & heterosexual. Just because it serves a broader romantic demographic & is available internationally does not make the irrational demands for such data valid.
Use a truly international website, a truly homosexual site for the study that you are looking for if this is the case.
The only significant exclusions are disregard of “marginal” ethnicities & other social personal segregants… such as Native Americans, the wide variety of distinct European, Asian, African, Islandic & Indigenous populations who do use this site and identify themselves publicly with the broad mechanisms of selection that the ORIGINAL founders of this site implemented long before other sites began to practice more inclusivity (not the current corporate asshats who presently own it). For that matter, there are other groups who stand to be counted, only to be blown off by this study, such as the Druze, Bahai, Hindu, Buddhists, Sikhs, New Agers, etc- who all have social romantic preferences no less valid than non-Americans & non-heterosexuals. What about the very forgotten group of Hermaphrodites – people who are the OPPOSITE of androgynous or gender exclusive?
You can take your whining for lack of inclusion as far as you want & still be equally valid & invalid with your whining at the same time. There are people who do not care about skin color at all, and will date only those who listen to (Big Band Swing- for example- or Metal, or Punk, or Folk)… and it matters to them A LOT more than skin color ever will, so why not include that too? …or why not place these same measurements on people who care less about skin color, but do care A WHOLE LOT about politics? there are republican nazis who will only date along party lines, same as there are democratic idiots who do this, same as there are those who care NOTHING about republicrats of any kind… such as anarchists, socialists, etc.
It’s all about having a brain in your head & appropriateness. THIS STUDY is NOT about those things. It’s about about what the researcher wanted to research— nothing more, nothing less.
…so… shut up already & read the data & do something about it. If you don’t like this study… DO ONE OF YOUR OWN.
There’s another word for “racism.” It’s called “normal.”
Wanting to stay within your own race is normal human behavior. Being ok with dating/mating other races is actually the abnormality, the programmed bias that the media, government and educational oligarchy has been feeding us for 50 years.
That fact that after decades of 24×7 race mixing propaganda, relentless social shaming for anything even hinting at “racism”, that we still have so many people preferring their own groups only proves that this is normal human behavior.
For those of you skeptical about the data, there are academic studies of this that do try to control for things like attractiveness, etc. http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/articles/Racial%2520Preferences%2520in%2520Dating.pdf. That study reached similar conclusions, although it finds more discrimination against Asian men and less against black women (it finds that men in its sample do not have a statistically significant racial preference on average) relative to the OKC data. It has some other counterintuitive points too, like older people, more attractive people, and people who grew up in less diverse zip codes are actually less discriminatory when it comes to dating.
I would be really interested in seeing if you pull out people at the extremes of attractiveness, say the top & bottom 10-20% in terms of likeliness to get a positive match and looked at the effect specifically on those people. My bet would be the race effect is stronger the less attractive you are and dissipates a bit if you are extremely attractive.
OH VEY!!
THIS RACISM MUST END. FORCIBLY IF NECESSARY. IF YOU DON’T DATE OUTSIDE YOUR RACE YOU ARE A RACIST BASTARD AND SHOULD BE SPAT ON BY SOCIETY. THERE ARE ALREADY TOO MANY ANTISEMITES IN THE WORLD WHO WANT TO SEND MY PEOPLE BACK TO THE OVEN. ARE RACIST BITCHES IN THE DATING GAME REALLY WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS???
while it is normal for “like to attract like”, it’s also normal to define what “like” is. i come from a family of mixed marriages. religious, ethnic, political mixing, etc— and that ALSO is VERY NORMAL since we know a metric monkey-load of more people like us than not like us. my family is mixed along these & other lines, but each person who is with another person is more LIKE the person they are with than not.
one marriage didn’t work out. that was the one with two white people. they had NOTHING in common except skin color & religion, and that wasn’t enough to build a relationship on, so their little white on white experiment didn’t work.
they each married someone with different skin color, but everything else in common; marriages totally worked & are going strong today. one 25 years, the other 21 years.
your hatred for race-mixing is normal. so is race-mixing, because there’s no such thing as racial purity. we’re all mixed. all of us. and yep, it’s also normal to gravitate to others who are the same as you, but it’s also normal focus on what you have in common, not your differences.
because no two of us are exactly alike. not even two wild characters as Jerry Falwell & Pat Robertson. they have LOTS in common- including religion, skin color & even gender. seems like they’d have a match made in heaven. but i’d bet a nickle they’d end up killing each other.
24×7 race mixing propaganda? HAHAHAHAHA.
let me know when you find two brain-cells to rub together, then reply when you learn how to speak with common sense & civility rather than from your hateful irrational illogical psychopathic knee-jerk lizard-brained fear.
LOL.
As an educated Black Jew I personally don’t date niggers because I don’t expect niggers to be able to read, much less to be able to read the Torah my rabbi gave me.
It makes sense, there’s no way I’d ever date outside my race. I don’t find non-whites attractive, physically or culturally, and the thought of having a child that looks like a stranger to me is terrifying. I know we’re currently living in an overly PC marxist dictatorship, but it’s my body, my life, and I’ll date who I want. Too many concessions for strangers in our lands have already been made. I won’t make sacrifices when it comes to my own life and my future children.
Jews did 9/11
search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=1332210
yo yo yo were da wite wimminz at
remba to holla at me white wimminz I’m 200% real true treat u like aa queen
I’m a white 20 something woman. I don’t date outside my race because I’m looking to start a relationship with someone culturally similar to me. Which associates highly with race. I won’t be part of an interracial relationship to appease cultural marxists such as Christian Rudder.
This entire post comes off as just an attempt at shilling for the book you’re trying to sell.
I hate being a black female because no one finds me to be attractive enough… They only see black women as sexual objects and not actual PEOPLE with FEELINGS. I am not the stereotypical black girl. I am me and I am quiet, I love rock music, I love anime, and I open-minded to many things. I work and I am in school. I have been on this website for a year and I had all terrible relationships. This is yet another thing to drag my self-esteem down and discourage me from even keeping my account on this website. And then reading comments from people like, “John,” saying how unattractive black women are and that we should be thankful for getting the short end of the attractive list. That makes me so sad and helpless. I didn’t ask to be black and if I could change my skin color I would in a heart-beat….
if you believe what you see on modern day TV/Films, you will be shocked by this study. The media portrays AA’s as being cool, hip, and generally accepted. The reality is that most people try and stay away from AA’s in their personal lives. The media has been trying to push for an acceptance of AA’s, but it just doesn’t work. Why? Well, we all know why. These stats will never change, no matter how much the PC media tries to push some races into our hearts.
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