The Big Lies People Tell In Online Dating

July 7th, 2010 by Christian Rudder

Nerds. As we all know, the Internet is a great place to pretend to be someone you're not. For instance, here's me in Second Life having a great time:

Anyhow, in many online situations, self-misrepresentation is totally harmless. Like, who cares if your Halo 3 avatar is taller than you are in real life? Or if flickr thinks you're single when you're really married? But in online dating, where the whole goal is to eventually meet other people in person, creating a false impression is a whole different deal.

People do everything they can in their OkCupid profiles to make themselves seem awesome, and surely many of our users genuinely are. But it's very hard for the casual browser to tell truth from fiction. With our behind-the-scenes perspective, we're able to shed some light on some typical claims and the likely realities behind them.

Let's get started.

"I'm 6 feet tall."

REALITY: People are two inches shorter in real life.

This whole post was inspired by an amusing graph we stumbled across while trying to answer the question Do taller guys have more sex? The answer, to a degree, is yes, and I'll expand on that in a little bit. But in this case what was more interesting than the sex was the (supposed) tallness of the guys.

The male heights on OkCupid very nearly follow the expected normal distribution—except the whole thing is shifted to the right of where it should be. You can see it better when we overlay the implied best fit below (pardon the technical language):

Almost universally guys like to add a couple inches. You can also see a more subtle vanity at work: starting at roughly 5' 8", the top of the dotted curve tilts even further rightward. This means that guys as they get closer to six feet round up a bit more than usual, stretching for that coveted psychological benchmark.

When we looked into the data for women, we were surprised to see height exaggeration was just as widespread, though without the lurch towards a benchmark height:

On a somewhat humbling personal note, I just went back and looked at my own profile, and apparently I list myself at 5' 11". Really, I'm a touch under 5' 10". Hmmm.

. . .

As for whether it even makes sense for people to make such an obvious and easily disproved exaggeration, the jury is out. We've found that taller people, up to a point, have more sex:

But as far as messages go, shorter women actually seem to get more attention:

These are the average weekly unsolicited message totals by height; you can think of these as the number of times a person is "hit on" out of the blue each week on OkCupid. a 5' 4" woman gets 60 more contacts each year than a six-footerThe genders are plotted on different scales because of the eternal fact that men almost always make the first move, so women get many more unsolicited messages.

It's plain from these two charts that women six feet or taller are either less attractive to men or are considered too intimidating to message. The data also raises the interesting possibility that these tall women are much more likely to sleep with a man who does approach them. Compare the 6' 0" woman to her 5' 4" counterpart: the taller woman gets hit on about two-thirds as much, yet has had slightly more sex partners.

"I make $100,000 a year."

REALITY: People are 20% poorer than they say they are.

Apparently, an online dater's imagination is the best performing mutual fund of the last 10 years. Here's what people are saying on OkCupid, versus what their incomes should be:

Use the slider to watch as people exaggerate more as they get older. As you can see, people advertise disproportionately high salaries for themselves. Just to pick a symbolic amount, there are consistently 4× the number of people making $100K a year than there should be.

Note that in formulating the "expected" lines for each age we were very careful to adjust for OkCupid's particular demographics: we compared every individual against the average not just by age but by zip code. Here a breakdown by gender of the exaggeration rates:

A woman may earn 76 cents on the dollar for the same work as a man, but she can fabricate, like, 85 cents no problem.

As a public service, we've decided to make our income calculations available. The following widget will calculate the statistically expected income of your potential matches; you give it a gender, an age, and a zip code, and it'll spit out a salary. Then you can confront your dates about exactly how much money they probably do or don't make. Fun!

. . .

We did a little investigating as to whether a person's stated income had any real effect on his or her online dating experience. Unsurprisingly, we found that it matters a lot, particularly for men. This is a by-age messaging distribution:

These bold colors contain a subtle message: if you're a young guy and don't make much money, cool. If you're 23 or older and don't make much money, go die in a fire. It's not hard to see where the incentive to exaggerate comes from.

"Here's a recent pic."

REALITY: The more attractive the picture, the more likely it is to be out-of-date.

The above picture, for example, was over two years old when it was uploaded. How do we know? Most modern cameras append text tags to the jpgs they take. These tags, called EXIF metadata, specify things like the exposure and f-stop settings, gps information if your camera has it, and, of course, the time and date the photo was taken. This is how programs like iPhoto know when (and sometimes where) you've taken your pictures.

Analyzing this stuff, we found that most of the pictures on OkCupid were of recent vintage; site-wide the median photo age at upload was just 92 days. However, hotter photos were much more likely to be outdated than normal ones. Here's a comparison (the age of a picture below is how old it was when it was uploaded to our site):

As you can see, over a third of the hottest photos on the site are a year old or more. And more than twice as many hot photos are over three years old (12%) as average-looking ones (5%), which makes sense because people are more inclined to cling to the pics that make them look their best

Another useful (if somewhat unorthodox) way to take in this graph is to follow the horizontal gridlines. If you trace out from "20%", for example, you can see that 1 in 5 average-looking photos is at least a year old, meanwhile, among the hot photos, nearly 1 in 5 is at least two years old.

It also turns out that older people also upload older photos:

The upshot here is, if you see a good-looking picture of a man over 30, that photo is very likely to be out-of-date. Not to get personal again, but my own OkCupid photo shows a Burberry-dressed 27 year-old, strumming away on his guitar. Meanwhile, I turn 35 in a couple months and am writing this post in the same shorts and tee-shirt I've been wearing for a week. Time waits for no man, unless that man doesn't update his personal information.

"I'm bisexual."

REALITY: 80% of self-identified bisexuals are only interested in one gender.

OkCupid is a gay- and bi-friendly place and it's not our intention here to call into question anyone's sexual identity. But when we looked into messaging trends by sexuality, we were very surprised at what we found. People who describe themselves as bisexual overwhelmingly message either one sex or the other, not both as you might expect. Site-wide, here's how it breaks out:

This suggests that bisexuality is often either a hedge for gay people or a label adopted by straights to appear more sexually adventurous to their (straight) matches. You can actually see these trends in action in the chart below.

Again, this is just the data we've collected. We'd be very interested in our bisexual users' thoughts on this single-sex-messaging phenomenon, so if you'd like to weigh-in please use the comments section. Please note, everybody, that we don’t assume that bis should be “into both genders equally.” We only assume that they should be into both genders at all. The swaths of red and blue that you see in these sexuality charts represent people who message only one gender. The purple areas are people who send any messages, in whatever proportion, to both men and women.

In this chart, throughout the teens and twenties, the male bisexual population is mostly observably gay men. By the mid-thirties, it seems, most of these men are more comfortable self-identifying as gay and have left the bi population. By the end of our chart, 3 of every 4 bi males on OkCupid are observably straight. Meanwhile, the proportion of men who message both women and other men holds fairly steady.

The proportions for women are more consistent over time:

12% of women under 35 on OkCupid (and the internet in general, I'd wager) self-identify as bi. However, as you can see above, only about 1 in 4 of those women is actually into both guys and girls at the same time. I know this will come as a big letdown to the straight male browsing population: three-fourths of your fantasies are, in fact, fantasies of a fantasy. Like bi men, most bi women are, for whatever reason, not observably bi. The primacy of America's most popular threesome, two dudes and an Xbox, is safe.

. . .

In gathering data for this last section on sexuality, we found so much interesting stuff that we're making it the topic of our next post. We'll look at the messaging, searching, and stalking (!) patterns of gay, bi, and straight people and see what else we can learn about the sexual continuum. Until then, no lie: thanks for reading.

842 Responses to “The Big Lies People Tell In Online Dating”

  1. Kent says:

    Hmm,

    really interesting article, mainly I got 2 things from it:

    1. Americans are really small, 5′ 9″ is only 175 cm, that is rather small for an average. I’m 186 according to my passport, but probably 185 after age shrinkage. And I’m about average for a north european. Almost every male I know is taller than me.

    2. I should lie on my profile, not sure about the longterm gain, but apparently it works.

  2. Galen Askton says:

    Very fascinating! I love how you’ve put the data through some cool processing to get interesting observations.

    Regarding bisexual people, I have noticed a definitive pattern among bisexual women. Many of them are married or otherwise seeing someone — typically a man. In their profiles, they often say they are specifically looking for a woman and thus that men should not message them. If this common pattern I have seen is reflective of many bi women, perhaps it is unfair to peg them as gay women misreporting their preferences. The same could be true of men.

    Consider expanding your data processing to see if you can filter based on whether the reporter indicates s/he is married / seeing someone and compare the gender of that person (if you can get it) against the gender of those s/he messages. You may find that significantly changes the graphs.

    Bravo, though. I hope you continue slicing and dicing the data to tell us interesting things. Also, I would love it if you would provide an OLAP or other tool for geeks like me to do our own slicing and dicing of your data and perhaps sharing our saved reports. That would allow us to play with aggregates without revealing any private data. Fun!

  3. just_stuff says:

    as a self proclaimed bi girl i have to agree with Eric Engle just from the girl perspective, I don’t need okcupid to get STRAIGHT sex (or relationships) so yes, mostly i message girls…

  4. Erica says:

    You do realize that most people who say they make $200,000 or $1,000,000 are doing it for a laugh, right? If I see a 22 year old college kid claiming to be a millionaire, I don’t think he’s trying to deceive anyone, I think he’s saying “this question is dumb.” Did you take “improbable” listings into account?

    Guilty as charged on the hot photos = older photos. But it’s not because my body has changed in the past 2 years, it’s because I am not photogenic and there are so few decent pictures of me.

    And to corroborate what the past 100 people have said about the bi thing – I’m 90% straight but there are times when I want to hook up with a girl. I generally change my sexual orientation on OKC at such times. It would be better to have a sliding Kinsey scale from 1 to 6, or a “currently looking for” field, rather than a restrictive “gay/bi/straight” choice.

  5. cmm says:

    I haven’t been on OKC lately but when I am, I browse and message guys pretty much exclusively. And I identify as bisexual. Am a straight faking adventurousness or a gay hedging my bets?

    How about a 3rd explanation: I am bisexual in a long term polyamorous relationship (15 years this month) with a woman. My preferred partners for “playtime” or FWB situations tend to be male. So anyone looking at my stats would see “self identified bisexual interacting exclusively with men” more or less, but the conclusions that the writers suggest would be completely wrong in my case, and probably many others as well.

  6. Serene says:

    Most bi people are in opposite-sex relationships, because there are more straight people out there to be attracted to than gay or bi people. So lots of bi people want to date people of the same sex. (Also, I have been in the same number of same-sex and opposite-sex long-term relationships, and I believe you’ll see that I message both men and women, but that doesn’t say anything about which people I find more attractive in general, just which I happened to find interesting on OKC.)

  7. thephoenix_ says:

    As a woman who has been on OKC for three years who is exclusively interested in men, I have learned the hard way that most men under 6′ lie about their height. I list my height as it is. Yet I still have men show up at the door who are shorter than me. That’s not the problem. The problem is that they are uncomfortable because they are shorter than me! Why lie about the very first thing I am liable to notice that is out of kilter with your stated information?

    Having said that, I have developed a marvelous long-term relationship with a man who is two inches shorter than he said he was, so there ya go. *giggle*

  8. Just Someguy says:

    Im bi and Ive been bi for a LONG time. I have regular bi male sex partners that I meet just for sex. I would Never EVER come on a dating site with gay men and reach out to a man. Its not what straight identified bi men do. That doesnt mean were in the closet. All my friends know Im bi.. What it means though is there is a vast difference culturally between gay and bi men. that difference cant be “math’ed” out without doing a seperate study. Bi Men are for sex, women are for sex and love. gay men arent in that equation at all, they belong amongst themselves doing their thing in their community.

  9. Mark Taylor says:

    This is all well and good, but since I have been honest in my height and income (and everything else…) am I at a disadvantage because women automatically are going to subtract 2″ and some bucks from my stated stats???? ( I actually have UNDER reported my income, because I am not looking for someone who is just looking for a sugar-daddy.)

  10. Pan says:

    lol… funny, I figured the biggest lie would be the married men lying about that particular status to get laid!!

  11. Keepiru says:

    I think that the reason bi people so often only message on gender, is that they have an easier time with one over the other. So they use the internet for the one they struggle with. A lot of bi girls have no problem meeting guys, but struggle meeting girls, for example.

  12. kyliia says:

    Interesting observations in several of the areas, but the generalizations you have made regarding the sexual orientations of your users are simplistic and appalling. Thanks for perpetuating the long-held stereotype that people who label themselves as bisexual are actually into only one sex or the other. Just because a person uses a dating site primarily to contact one gender or the other does not necessarily mean they are not active with both sexes. Many people may use the site to contact one gender more than the other because they may have a more difficult time meeting members of that gender. For example, a bisexual woman in a small town can have a much easier time meeting men than meeting other (attractive) women who are attracted to women. So, in that case, a dating site might be more useful for meeting a same-sex partner.

    I understand that the purpose of this article was to see what trends can be drawn quickly from user data, and that it’s not a scientific study by any means. I also realize that there are probably users who identify themselves as bi who really are mainly into one gender or the other. However, I’d like you to take into consideration that sexuality is often not black and white. Alfred Kinsey believed that every person lies somewhere on a continuum, with heterosexuality and homosexuality being the respective extremes. Many people are not entirely homo- or heterosexual, but lie somewhere in the middle of that continuum. People can also go through phases where they are more into one gender over the other, but that does not mean they are going back and forth between being gay and straight. You cannot call someone gay or straight because they message one gender more than the other.

    I generally enjoy the articles and quizzes I read on this site, I just didn’t like the generalizations I read in this one. Please do some research on bisexuality before you write your next article.

    Also, I’m bi, if it wasn’t apparent already. (or maybe I’m straight this month, depending on whom I’ve messaged. or maybe I’m in the closet but not comfortable enough to identify as gay until I reach my mid-thirties.)

  13. Kris says:

    I think one of the most striking things that wasn’t mentioned was the flat peak on the distribution of reported male heights. As someone with a lot of experience with statistics, that’s a tell tale sign of something very interesting – multiple bell curves being added together.

    In other words, about half of the males tell the truth about their height, and half add several inches. This seems much more likely, and better fits the observation than the blanket statement that all males are exaggerating height.

  14. Greg says:

    Brilliant research and data sets, despite critics. I appreciate that ok generally sticks to highly objective metrics (little subjective). Like ‘em or not, here they are(!), so you can draw your own conclusions. Keep up the good work.

  15. Kittie says:

    On the bi messaging thing. Most women like to wait for responses to be sent to them. For instance, a bi girl won’t go out of her way to message a girl, but might respond to one. I know I am more lazy about searching for women compared to men, but that is just my 2 cents.

  16. NYC1985 says:

    I don’t lie on my profile. I list my real height. And I don’t even list my income b/c if you’re worried about that, then your priorities aren’t where they should be.

  17. bkjkbkj says:

    Bisexuality and okcupid are interesting to me. If I could I would prefer if it were like how facebook would have you do it, say what your interested in and not put any labels on it. Except that is dumb. Obviously if everyone on okcupid was genderqueer and put their gender on a spectrum then the average person would be like F this crazy site, because they are not prepared to smash the gender binary whatever. But i have always felt uncomfortable proclaiming I am bi on okcupid because I think that is dumb. If i had to pick a label I would say poly, but you know queer works real well tpp.

    That being said this data has enlightened me a lot about sexuality/affection on okcupid.

    I never realized that men do most of the initial messaging on okcupid. For me that is weird because I would prefer that women do it or not me does it. Knowing this I am able to piece something together. Women are less likely to respond to my messages because women who like men is a much larger category than men who like men. Therefore so many more people are contacting them. This means that they can be more choosy.

    When you look to the masculine end of bisexual options on facebook you have a much smaller pool of people to choose from, and that means that people are less selective. The overall volume is down when it comes to men who like men, which makes it easier to be responded to and easier to be solicited. when I think about it there have not been that many women who messaged me and I was thinking they must think that I am into guys or something. i didn’t realize this was along gender lines.

    It makes sense if everyone just like didn’t have genders and whatever. But then I realize that this is because I am attracted to both and I don’t really car about gender as a result. And in reality only 3 percent of people have this ability. Which is weird. I guess, some people just like the opposite gender they constructed. Man I never wanted to be different but this is so easy, and I have never really thought too analytically about this before okcupid I really did some thinking yeaaaaaah

  18. Eric says:

    My impression is that OK Cupid users are more confident about their sexuality than average people, or even than Match.com users. More confident people choose to mingle on OK Cupid, many less confident are “just sitting and crying at home.” So it would not be surprising if OK Cupid users really were taller and richer than the average population– even controlling for zip codes.

    Its a little surprising you should choose to believe your subscribers are liars, when the reality may be that they are superior.

  19. gitanita says:

    not to beat a dead horse, but the problem with this research on the “bi” issue is one of labels.

    if i am given two options: “bi” or “straight”, fuck yeah i’m going to choose bi. while all of my primary romantic relationships in the past have been with men, and they are the gender that i find myself drawn to on a more regular basis, i am also attracted to women. i have had sex with a few of them, i have kissed many of them, and there are few days that go by when seeing a beautiful woman doesn’t make me bite my lip or raise my eyebrow. identifying myself as “straight” would deny all of that. it would also deny the fact that while my past impulses have drawn me to men, i don’t rule out the possibility of something else finding me tomorrow. i don’t think this makes me a pussy or a hypocrite, and i certainly don’t identify as “bi” so that some asshole will think i am more sexually adventurous than i am. if anything, i want them to know right away that i’m a girl who has been with many different kinds of people, and who has an open mind.

    whatever happened to thinking about sexuality on a scale, kinsey-style? or using the catch-all of “queer”? not that any of it really matters, but i admit that my muscles clenched up at the idea of being called a liar for not being gay enough to be “bi”. this is the danger of categorizing, of denying minorities their minority-ness. it’s like when people tell me i’m not latina because my hair is blond.

  20. Flwyd says:

    “S” writes: “OkCupid is using a narrow definition of bisexuality according to which not only all bisexuals have to be interested in both men and women (rather than a variety of genders, not all of which have to be male or female), but we also have to do that at the very same time.”

    I suggest that if you identify as bisexual, but are in a phase where you’re only interested in one gender, that you should update your dating profile to indicate that. Otherwise, you’ll get lots of messages from the gender you’re not currently interested in.

    I suspect that some portion of the single-focus bisexuals in the data set are people in a relationship but who are pursuing contact with the other gender (e.g., a woman saying “I have a boyfriend, but I’m looking to meet some women”). By listing themselves as bisexual, they’re indicating that both genders play a role in their romantic life, even if their goals on the site are focused on one half of the population.

  21. Anjelica says:

    Re Bisexual: Loreliene made strong points. I’m glad for the well structured post. I’ll still add mine as I struggle with whether I should choose bi or straight.

    I had exchanges with women and men on here – so I guess I fall into the subgroup that did send messages to both genders.
    Having said that, I recently changed it to straight because I figured it was a more accurate description of what kind of partner I look for to walk through life with.
    I then got a message by a handsome, fun guy for whom “bisexual women” were a red flag. My, so open minded – and then that!

    If I roam the kink scene – I say I’m bi. All women are bi there ;) It implies attraction – and nothing beyond.
    If I roam the vanilla world, I say I’m straight. Since it reflects my love- and sexlife more accurately.

    So, what would be more honest to say?
    I changed it back to bisexual.
    I think I would have a problem with a man at my side who cannot handle that I find women attractive ;)

  22. Jay says:

    I have a lot of bi friends on OKC and often they complain about getting search and quiver results from OKC that are biased towards one gender, which frustrates them. Or, they receive messages from only one gender and often they want to explore with the other gender. For example, my girl bi friends have had several relationships with men and are looking to have some fun and explore a relationship with a woman. However, most of their search results, quiver, and messages come from men. Many of them switch their listing to “gay” because they’re tired of getting all the attention from men. In your future research, I would suggest looking at the stats of people who switch from bi to gay and if they include any info about their bisexual status in their ‘gay’ profile. My friends will write at the top usually, “I identify as bi but want to meet a girl and all I get is messages from men.”

  23. Lhat says:

    I’m a bi female who has used your site in the past. As I recall, I mostly messaged females — perhaps exclusively — but that was because I was constantly bombarded by tons of messages from guys and had no trouble finding boyfriends. I was most interested in having a relationship with a woman at the time, and they were hardest to find, but I was by no means only dating one sex. In other words, I don’t think my messaging habits reflected my interests or my dating habits. So you may be seeing some of that in your data, if others had similar experiences.

  24. safdfdsfdss says:

    I guess I should add two inches to my listed hight but I really am 6’1″ so yeah I’m tall already.

  25. Q-efx says:

    Haha, self owned! :)

  26. Q-efx says:

    oh something different I noticed and what I want to know: Are there really as many non-smokers out there as profiles want us to tell? :)

  27. Squeeky says:

    I’m not bi, but as a mathematician, I would point out that there would be some bi people who only message one gender due to chance. Particularly if they only message one person and then quit. I am interested in what proportion you would expect by chance. Also I am vaguely interested in how many straight people who message the same gender. After all, some times friends join the site together.

  28. J.D.Harper says:

    I’m curious as to how you determined which photos were the “hot ones” for the “Here’s a recent pic” stats.

  29. daedalus223 says:

    Damn, they nailed me. I claim to be 6’2″. but my military record says I’m 6’1 & 3/4″

  30. Librarylady says:

    Thanks for the article, but not for the reasons you may think. After reading the responses and the information, I now know why I have not been successful with online dating sites: I’m truthful! Maybe if I lied, I’d have more luck. It’s just possible that people who are using these sites wouldn’t recognize the truth if they were looking right at it. I’m with Max; I tell the truth: I really am 5’4″, I really am a teacher, etc, etc. It never occurred to me to lie about anything since the end goal was to meet someone in person. I also agree with one of the other responders who said that your “research” was a little off and he worried now that someone looking at his profile would think that he lied about how much money he made and his height when he truthfully listed both in his profile. I did the little “test,” too, about income and they had me $40,000 lower. Not everyone will fit into the pigeon hole, so I wouldn’t worry too much. Anyway, thanks for making my day and making me feel better; I might be the cheese standing alone, but I’m an honest piece of cheese! :)

  31. Z says:

    “Like bi men, most bi women are, for whatever reason, not observably bi.”

    It’s really offensive to equate “bisexual” with “interested in a mixed-sex threesome.” Not all bisexual people are sexually promiscuous, and not everyone on OKC is looking primarily for sex, either. My partner and I are both bisexual, but since we’re in a committed relationship, we’re not “observably bi”- neither of us is off looking for sex with other men *or* women. On OKC, I look for friendship, and I primarily message women because they are proportionally less likely to be looking for casual sex. Also, I’ve observed that men are far more likely to message me when we have virtually nothing in common, suggesting that their interest is in my picture rather than my personality, or that they’re desperate. Neither appeals.

  32. Anonymous says:

    Another reason for bi people to only message one gender: as a bi woman I have no trouble meeting plenty of men interested in me IRL but I need to look a little harder–say, go on the internet–to find women.

  33. www.maxloh.com says:

    This height stuff is interesting. I’ve read in a billion articles that men over 6 feet tall get hot girlfriends very easily. So I’ve always been very self-conscious about my height but I always report truthfully. However, it’s hard to tell what is “truth.”

    For example, if I measure my own height using very accurate measurements (a tissuebox orthogonal to the wall to mark off my height) I am 5′ 9″. Yet, every time I meet someone who says they’re 5′ 10″, I compare heights with them and discover that I am a hair taller.

    This suggests that in addition to the exaggeration of Okcupid users, people also exaggerate their height in real life by an entire inch. That means okcupid users are actually THREE inches shorter!

    And stop complaining about okcupid chicks thinking you’ll be shorter. Okcupid never said EVERYONE lies about their height. Only on average. ForReal, you’re a 6′ 2″ COLLEGE STUDENT on okcupid I find that kind of pathetic; you can get chicks in a second. Then again I am also a college student on okcupid and that is pathetic; however, I only made my account immediately after my hot girlfriend broke up with me and I never use it anymore. I just found this blog interesting.

  34. Ryan says:

    To all the bi’s here that are raging unnecessarily hard:

    Get over yourselves and realize that OKC is just analyzing statistics. They are not making any claims about you or your sexuality. They are just pointing out a pretty deep-rooted trend that flows directly against the intuitive outcome; people who declare themselves as bi tend not to actively pursue people of both sexes via this site. This could be explained by a vast number of reasons (OKC provided a few), but the take-home message is that in all likelihood any *self-described* bi person on this site will probably not pursue both sexes. It’s sort of a trend of false advertising that people should be aware of. Note that at no point does OKC degrade or insult people who actually are bi, so stop taking this personally. There is no “right” sexuality and I don’t think OKC ever implied that there was. It just seems ridiculous that people would claim one preference and then act in an overwhelming favor of another.

  35. wendy wonderful says:

    Are you able to date uploaded pics with those EXIF metadata tags along with the OKC tag to call people out? This would eliminate a lot of outdated pics and false representation. For example, a guy I talked to on the phone for about six months kept putting me off with stories of ‘I travel for work and am soooo busy’ turned out to be over 300 pounds when his photos showed him as being healthy and attractive. I found this out when he had surgery and his pain pills made him all sappy and he emailed me current pics out of embarrassment at a comment I made about how I really liked him and had turned away a guy at a bar one night based on my hopes of some day meeting this guy because we had such a great phone relationship going on. Needless to say, I was not happy. I told him I would be his friend and even join a gym with him and get him help for whatever caused this change in him through the hospital I work at, but he had strung me along and lied to me and that is a big issue for me so a relationship was no longer an option. An honest picture would have avoided that. He still has the old pics up and no recent ones.

  36. wendy wonderful says:

    unrelated to this subject but i cant find a place to submit this suggestion:w

    When I HIDE a profile, can you please make it always be HIDDEN, not return the next time I do a SEARCH. It is very cumbersome for me to have to go through all of the men who I would never consider dating who fall into the parameters of my SEARCH SETTINGS every time I return to do a SEARCH in the MATCHES section.

    thanks!

    okc rocks!

  37. small_hours says:

    Regarding height, the fact that both women and men appear to be taller than the US population in general and that, while there may be an incentive for men to exaggerate their height, it’s less clear why women would – maybe the users of this site are not a representative sample of the population as a whole.

    As to the age of photographs – it goes without saying that the older you are, the more older photographs of yourself you will have. When I was 25, digital cameras were a relatively new phenomenon, and there simply weren’t many photographs of me from e.g. when I was 18. But at 32, I can find plenty old pictures of myself (though of course, I’m aging gracefully…honest…)

  38. Eric says:

    I am everything I say in my profile…to a tee!

    I new this awhile ago….this goes for any online dating site.

  39. L says:

    As an openly Bi man, if I’m in the mood for another man I’ll use a site dedicated for gay men.  Partly because what I want in a woman (great personality and body) is not what I want in a man (great cock).  Plus, gay dating sites have a lot more useful information that’s specific to that population, a deeper pool to fish from, and generally just fits my needs better.  

    As these numbers indicate, OKC is fairly straight-oriented.  Which makes me a little sad since I’d kill for another hot Bi man for a male/male/female threesome.

  40. Anonymous Coward says:

    I ran the average incoming calculator and compared it with ages/incomes of some people I know. I find that in my circles the calculator produces a value that is on average significantly below the reality. I make about 60% more then it says I should and my other data points make between 5% and 50% more.

    The probability is that the source data set describing average income includes people who are for some reason excluded from the okcupid population. People in very low in come or poverty level income are less likely to own a computer, have an internet connection and subscribe to okcupid. This results in a skewed result. I would be interested in a revised comparison where the real “average income” data set is first filtered to exclude people who are outside the demographics of the population of okcupid, or at least to weight their data proportionately.

  41. Matt says:

    I am one of those males that identifies as bi but predominately messages women. There are several problems. First, options for sexual preference are too limited. On other sites which allow more flexibility I identify as heteroflexible because, in truth, there is only a small subset of men that I’m interested in.

    Second, and on a related note, I favor more effeminate men. Men that tend to message me on OKC or visit my profile tend to have a face full of beard, and that’s a major turn off. Men that I find that are more to my physical/mental liking either live on the other side of the country, or they’re straight. In any case, there’s not way for it to work.

    Second, I do want to have children at some point, so I do tend to show a preference for women. That’s just a simple matter of biology.

    The problem is that I like particular traits, and because of social conditioning, genetics, whatever; women tend to have those traits. I find them just as attractive in the men who have them… they just aren’t as likely to have them. I really think that hetero/homoflexible should be added at least, as well as pansexual, and possibly others.

  42. Justin says:

    Nice article. I’m surprised of how substantially a person’s salary correlates to increased messages received.

    As for pictures being older if they are good. That makes perfect sense! Good pictures can be few and far between. My main photo is 1.5 years old. Another one is 5 years old.

    And btw, who is the cute guy with “million” written across his forehead? Can OkCupid match me with him ;)

  43. David Mausolf says:

    Max and Aditya,

    As a Marketing/Data analyst myself, I wonder if we are only seeing a snapshot of bisexual/user behavior.

    The data point you used above looked at the proportion of claimed bisexuals that had ever sent a message to a man/female/or man and female. As we know from website analytics, user behavior cannot always be summarized simply by one metric.

    I think your theory may be right that there is a proportion of bisexual men/women that are claiming status for a perceived sexual advantage. My follow-up question would be. Of those that sent messages to only men or women, what % of time was spent looking at male/female profiles.

    I believe the data might suggest that although there are men and women that only send to either their same or opposite sex, that there are distinct populations within the data set that spend time looking at the opposite sex. I’m not sure what your information your database is collecting, but that would be an interesting data point to correlate to their messaging behavior and age.

    From this information we could create a more complete image of bisexual behavior.

    Colin William’s study of bisexual behavior in San Francisco showed that bisexual behavior is not fixed, one may for a significant time period only approach a partner of the same or opposite sex. What is the distribution of length of membership of members who identify as bisexual and only have messaged those of the same or opposite sex. If the distribution is skewed towards a short time period ( less than 1 year) that may mean that we are only seeing a picture of their behavior rather then an evolving one.

    Great work overall. It is always a pleasure seeing behavioral research.

    David Mausolf

  44. tk says:

    …just a note on bisexuality an orientation designation.

    I find that it is a really limiting term. I appreciate alternate designations (like on FetLife, for example) such as heteroflexible and homoflexible.

    I, as a woman am primarily interested in persuing LTR with men. Although, I am attracted to women and thoroughly enjoy dating them and having them as play partners. Intimacy with other women is amazing, i’m just not inclined to fall in love or marry one.

    That doesn’t exactly make me straight, it doesn’t exactly make me bisexual either. Though, bisexual probably fits better.

  45. Lame says:

    If nothing else, this post made me feel really poor. You know, I thought having a Master’s Degree would be worth something…but even with it, Teachers still get paid rubbish. Cheers!

  46. DGD says:

    In your chart “sex partners by height”, could you plot the dispersion of values around the line?

    Also if the line represents the average number of sex partners, then it might be a deceptive number as the number of sexual partners can be power-law distributed. SO the average can get dragged up by very active individuals. The modal number by height might be more revealing.

    Also, remind us of the question you asked to get “number of sex partners”.

  47. Lauren says:

    Regarding the bisexual split…

    Do you include bi people /responding/ to messages from the opposite sex? That’s a pretty big indicator, too.

    Also, I’m currently not looking for a guy, because I’m with one right now. He’s fine with me playing with women, so I still am casually looking for a female friend/

  48. Karen says:

    I’m a bi female and historically have corresponded with maybe eight men on this site, and only two women. I seem to have an equal attraction to both men and women, but when it comes to who I’m drawn to within the dating game, I tend to go for men more. Who knows why? It could be because dating men is “easier,” both in terms of how my dad would react and how society would react. It could be because I just like men more. Whatever the reason, I’ve talked to a bunch of guys, but only two girls, in the five years I’ve been on this site.

  49. Greg says:

    If you look at my meseekingu profile, I message mostly women. If you look at my biseinen profile, I message mostly men. I just found that a “one-size-fits-all” profile for men and women simply does not work. So in fact, I am a bisexual male that corresponds with both genders pretty uniformly, but does so in two different (albeit linked) profiles. If this practice is not an anomaly, then it may be skewing your data on bisexuals.

    Incidentally, I have found the OkC culture NOT as bi friendly as I would have hoped. I have had both men and women call my sexuality into question, and I have found that certain women will simply shut the doors on dating a bisexual, and I’ve found that particularly discouraging.

  50. druink says:

    Interesting to read some of the comments about the gender-biased bi on here.

    (and for the commentor who says OKC should learn something about bisexuality before making notes about it, do you know anything about statistics?)

    Analysing behaviour is difficult. I might identify as bisexual but only message women on OkCupid (hoping against hope for that ‘special one’, perhaps?). But ‘behaviour’ is only relevant given context, and I might be getting it on with men via a different environment: craigslist or gay bars or in prison or whatever.

    I feel that’s the true advantage of being bisexual; I have opporunities for sex in envionments weighted toward pickups of either gender, though my interest in each is different.

    Maybe on OkCupid I’m more geared to the sort of relationship I want with a woman and so am effectively ‘straight’, but not comfortable selecting that option under ‘sexuality’ in case a man of the sort I am looking for should accidentally message me. The crux is that OkC invites ambiguity from the very start, unlike eHarmony where it is assumed that you are looking for a certain kind of connection (i.e., marriage), and yet in practice most people will wind up using OkC according to a specific pattern of behaviour.