The REAL ‘Stuff White People Like’

September 8th, 2010 by Christian Rudder

What is it that makes a culture unique? How are whites, blacks, Asians, or whoever different from everybody else? What tastes, interests, and concepts define an ethnic group? And is there any way to make fun of other races in public and get away with it?

These are big questions, and here's how we answered them.

We selected 526,000 OkCupid users at random and divided them into groups by their (self-stated) race. We then took all these people's profile essays (280 million words in total!) and isolated the words and phrases that made each racial group's essays statistically distinct from the others'.

For instance, it turns out that all kinds of people list sushi as one of their favorite foods. But Asians are the only group who also list sashimi; it's a racial outlier. Similarly, as we shall see, black people are 20 times more likely than everyone else to mention soul food, whereas no foods are distinct for white people, unless you count diet coke.

Using this kind of analysis, we were able find the interests, hobbies, tastes, and self-descriptions that are specially important to each racial group, as determined by the words of the group itself. The information in this article is not our opinion. It's data, aggregated from the essays of half a million real people.

So here's the real stuff white people like.

Click on the icons to toggle between men/women.

In general, I won't comment too much on these lists, because the whole point of this piece is to let the groups speak for themselves, but I have to say that the mind of the white man is the world's greatest sausagefest. Unless you're counting Queens of the Stone Age, there is not even one vaguely feminine thing on his list, and as far as broad categories go we have: sweaty guitar rock, bro-on-bro comedies, things with engines, and dystopias.

As for the interests of white women, you have romance novels, some country music, and a broad selection of Good Housekeeping type stuff. It's also amazing the extent to which their list shows a pastoral or rural self-mythology: bonfires, boating, horseback riding, thunderstorms. I remind you that OkCupid's user base is almost all in large cities, where to one degree or another, if you find yourself doing much of any of these things, civilization has come to an end.

If I had to choose over-arching themes for white people's lists, for men, I'd go with "frat house" and for women, "escapism." Whether one begot the other is a question I'll leave to the reader.

Stuff black people like.

Hopefully it's been obvious that the font-size of a phrase indicates the relative frequency with which it appears. So, toggling between black men and black women above, you can see that while soul food is important to both, it's really, really important to the women. In fact, soul food and black women is the single strongest phrase/group pair we found.

The above lists also make it clear that, regardless of whether Jesus himself was black, his most vocal followers definitely are. Religious expressions weren't among the top phrases for any of the other races, but they're all over the place for black men and (especially) black women, for whom 13 of the top 50 phrases are religious. Black people are more than twice as likely than average to mention their faith in their profiles.

Finally, it's worth noting that of the four lists we've seen so far, black women's is the only one to explicitly include someone of another race: Justin Timberlake.

Double finally, how bold is it that I am cool is the second most typical phrase for black men?

OkTrends Racial Stereotype #1

In the course of researching this article and, in particular, comparing white guys to black guys, a handy shortcut occurred to me:

If you're trying to figure out if white dudes like something, put fucking in the middle, and say it out loud. If it sounds totally badass, white dudes probably love it. Let's see this principle in practice:

Stuff Latinos like.

Music and dancing—merengue, bachata, reggaeton, salsa—are obviously very important to Latinos of both genders. The men have two other fascinating things going on: an interest in telling you about their sense of humor (i'm a funny guy, very funny, outgoing and funny, etc.) and an interest in industrial strength ass-kicking (mma, ufc, boxing, marines, etc.) Basically, if a Latin dude tells you a joke, you should laugh.

OkTrends Racial Stereotype #2

El chiste de knock-knock:

Latinas' interests are fairly typical for a dating site: you got friends, career, education, movies, music, a few physical details, and, oh yeah...morbid fear. We dug further into I'm terrified of (on their list at #42) and found which words typically came next. It's mostly insects and "the dark", though one expert tautologist is "terrified of being scared" and another woman is "terrified of Martians."

I feel obligated to state, on behalf of white men everywhere: That woman should get a grip. Martians are nothing compared to the Sardaukar.

Stuff Asians like.

As you can see, both Asian men and women choose I'm simple as their go-to self-description. Contrast this to black men's I am cool and Latinos' I'm a funny guy. It's also interesting that Asian men very often mention their specific heritage (taiwan, korea, singapore, vietnam, china) while Asian women don't.

OkTrends Racial Stereotype #3

Combing through these lists, you can see the different ways women use cosmetics:

  • White women show off their eyes (mascara is #5 on their list).
  • Black women show off their lips (lip gloss, #7).
  • Latinas show off both (mascara, #18 / lip gloss, #22).
  • Asian women, however, show off their practicality (lip balm, #48).
. . .

So far, I've gone through racial groups in order of their prominence on OkCupid. For brevity (I know this is the internet), I'll present the remaining lists without foolish commentary. You can click any of the links to reveal them inline.

Stuff Indians like...
Stuff Middle Easterners like...
Stuff Pacific Islanders like...

Sidenote: reading level

Since we were parsing all this text anyway, we thought it would be cool to do some basic reading-level analysis on what people had written about themselves. We used the Coleman-Liau Index, and when we partitioned the essays by the race of the writers, we found this:

Before anyone gets too charged-up about this, we also ran reading level by religion and found this:

Is there a Comic Sans version of the Bible? There really should be. We subdivided this chart further, by how serious each person was about their beliefs:

Note that for each of the faith-based belief systems I've listed, the people who are the least serious about them write at the highest level. On the other hand, the people who are most serious about not having faith (i.e. the "very serious" agnostics and atheists) score higher than any religious groups.

. . .

We'll be revisiting race later this month, with a statistical investigation of interracial dating, and we're almost finished with the article on (bi-)sexuality we promised last time. Thanks for reading, everyone.

Till next time,

923 Responses to “The REAL ‘Stuff White People Like’”

  1. Jean-Marc says:

    “Soul food” is a very US-centric expression. In fact, it seems to me that this whole study is US-centric. What proportion of OkCupid’s users are USians ? Fun and interesting article though.

  2. Estuarÿ says:

    What makes you think Queens Of The Stone Age are feminine?

  3. Nobody says:

    Did you actually parse every word in every profile or are you using the database of interest words which are created by users with the [ ] command around words?

    They are two very different sets of data and the latter can be misleading.

  4. Dylan says:

    I know it’s not a representative sample, or even supposed to be, but doesn’t OkCupid lean towards older, rather than younger, white men? That would explain the hefty presence of Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, Hitchhiker’s Guide, CCR, Ghostbusters, Blazing Saddles, etc. Maybe follow-up with a look into age group differences?

  5. Ran says:

    Beautiful, but I think there might be a big problem with this study, that it doesn’t take nationality into account. An Israeli middle-eastern is very different from an Iraqi middle-eastern, and a Nigerian black person is very different from an American black person.

    Unless I missed something, this was completely ignored, which is a shame. I’d like to see at least the same results in the USA, if not for many nations.

  6. Frank says:

    Haha, This was a really cool article to read. And I have no idea why anyone would be offended. I know I LOVE Ghostbusters. The only depressing thing is finding out that Nickelback was listed on so many Middle-Eastern male’s profiles. Nickelback spreads like a virus,people. We must actively discourage our friends of all races from violating their earholes with crappy corporate rock.

  7. Aaron says:

    I think all the country heavy language is thanks to a small, extremely like minded set of rural or rural sympathizing girls, and don’t represent the rest of girls very well. SO we may want to parse the ladies on geography and see what comes up.

  8. Arabalchemist says:

    I find this article especially intriguing because it does what OKTrends articles tend to do, create lively discussions about topics that aren’t usually talked about in society as a whole, really really well. I would gander a guess that the differences noted in the article are more indicative of cultural differences than specific racial differences or stereotypes.

  9. unogeek says:

    I believe your survey (if that’s what you call it) is pretty accurate, but it accomplishes almost nothing of value. Don’t you believe it’s time to allow people discover that our differences aren’t really all that different. The because we’re single we’re all looking for the same thing, and lets focus on that. Most of us aren’t looking to match races, we’re looking to match personalities and aspirations. I most of the profiles (white, black, asian, indian, hispanic) you’ll find a commonality “SOULMATE” which is what we seek. Perhaps we’re not all well educated, well traveled, or even well rounded. But we are all smart enough to create a profile and put in some descriptive verbage and hope for the best. Let’s try to find things to bring people together and show our common goals, hopes and dreams not to seperate us more than we already are by hilighting our minor differences. Regardless of our race, creed or even religion, we are simply seeking the someone that we thinks completes us. That’s really enough to deal with, isn’t it?

  10. Gary says:

    I would be interested to know the frequency within each group of each of the top 50 phrases (#2 in Christian’s comment above) … the ratio tells me how much MORE likely the group is to say something than the population as a whole, but that doesn’t necessarily tell me how many people in that group actually said it…

  11. Chicx says:

    Wow! I like the fact that both Asian men and women simply put “I’m simple” as their go-to self-description. Kudos to Asian modesty!

  12. michael says:

    Awesome analysis. Oh how I wish I could get anonymized data like this. Would love to do some additional analytics.

  13. haf138888 says:

    I am a white woman but according to your list of what white women like.. I am not, hahaha. This was entertaining. Thanks.

  14. loreleion says:

    The Coleman-Liau Index measures at what grade level a text should be comprehensible. If you’re writing a children’s book and score a 13, you probably aren’t very proficient. Most people aren’t writing their dating profiles with graduate-degree level reading proficiency in mind.

    On that Wikipedia page they linked in the article, just take a look at the formula. The only variables are the average number of letters per 100 words and the average number of sentences per 100 words. No grammar, spelling, sentence structure, or any other measures of actual proficiency are tested

  15. Michael says:

    What’s the correlation between writing proficiency level and reported education level?

  16. TUG says:

    Very interesting. Ssssssample bias out the wazoo, but interesting nonetheless.

    Also, on your ethnicity/reading level graph, don’t start the graph 2/3ds the way up the chart. It’s deceptive. The way chart the chart is composed exaggerates the differences.

  17. CB says:

    Why is The Kite Runner listed twice under Indian guys? Shouldn’t that be one item, in a larger type size?

  18. Marbran says:

    I’m stunned by the Alicia Keys dominance! She’s great, but if you consider all of the crazy talent out there, for her to be so popular clearly shows how appealing she is to a wide range of people.

    Concerning the writing stats, you have to admit that 8-9th grade is a pretty slim difference. That said, I think the Atheists ranked the highest because they are more critical thinkers. They’d have to be to be Atheists, right?

  19. Oberon says:

    Really interesting data, especially toward the end. The “stuff X people like” portion mostly reveals that people of all races are frickin’ boring.

    The one dimension that seems to be missing from all this is gender preference- are there differences in each category between cisgender and queer folk, or not?

  20. TK says:

    OK, so how the hell did you manage to resist writing foolish commentary on the pacific islanders phrases….? Valium?

    “Alicia Keys”, “hula”, “kickboxing”, “Michael Buble”….

  21. Arbitor says:

    “Humility” is virtue –mostly embraced by Asians.

  22. BossGalaga says:

    This is fantastic. Well done.

  23. Onideus Mad Hatter says:

    I calculated the frequency of normal people who use okcupid, oops its 0%, poll meaningless ~*fartz*~

  24. Bailey says:

    How can one be “Really serious” about being an agnostic?

  25. W says:

    It is really sad that, on average, no one can write past a 9th grade level.

  26. Tim S says:

    @Athiesto – The chart shows atheists as having the highest writing proficiency level (an indicator of intelligence). So, you can calm down. Good thing it’s not an indicator or chart comprehension skills.

    @Voodoo Idol – I am in a Fraternity and I agree with the generalization. The point wasn’t that we’re all into Frank Zappa and Douglas Adams (although I personally am).

    The point of the reference to a frat house was the lack of femininity. Frat guys don’t cry. Well they do, but they never hear the end of it. That was the point. White guys make their profiles overly masculine; sports, action movies, and rock. You won’t find Enya on the white guy list, whereas Alicia Keys was on the Black guys’ list.

  27. Ryane says:

    Poor Me I guess I do not fit into any of that…. The article was amusing in a superficial way.

  28. Jade says:

    Fascinating review of information, cross referenced with self-proclaimed racial and religious labels. My profile completely met the Latina generalizations. I think this information is pretty valuable in getting to know someone. Of course, there are those “wild cards” who don’t fit those general commonalities – or have some important differences – but wouldn’t that be a very engaging conversation to have with a person?

    Thanks, Christian (and other OK Staff)!

  29. CleverTitania says:

    Voodoo, the box isn’t White Men, it’s White People. Below that they specified primary indicators on white men vs white women’s profiles.

    Folks, I’m a white woman living in Illinois (not rural but not Chicagoland) and I only have five of the boxed items on my profile. But I’ve seen everything in that list on one profile or another, and many are things I see constantly. It just means that there are trends, and not all apply to the bulk of people. But then again, I live in the Midwest my whole life and generally don’t like camping, fishing, hiking, sports, NASCAR or country music – I’m used to be an odd one out.

    Stereotypes are tricky, because they are often based in reality. Are all gay men effeminate? Of course not. But most of the effeminate men you meet are gay. Hence it’s not stereotypical to write a gay character as effeminate. To write an entire cast of gay characters as effeminate, that would be stereotyping (unless it’s story appropriate, i.e. Priscilla Queen of the Desert).

    But I think it’s important for some of us to be reminded that the research behind stereotypes (by and large) is not intended to generalize any ethnicity, religious beliefs, race, gender, sexual orientation or color. They are based in understanding the trends of those different groups of society, to better understand ourselves and one another. Just because some use them hurtfully and without context doesn’t mean everyone does.

    I’m also curious to see the politics/writing variant.

  30. DaveGeek says:

    Well let’s see, the two groups who place the highest value on religion happen to be the least “sophisticated” in their writing. So are we saying that they’re dumb because they’re religious or is it because they’re Hispanic and Black?

    Or maybe it just could be a level of ethnocentrism/ class bias in the criteria for measuring writing “sophistication” that penalizes Hispanics and Blacks. In addition to being the two most religious minded groups they also are over-represented in the lower classes in America. This is usually accompanied by lower levels of education which may account for more of this lousy writing amongst the religious than religious belief itself.

    What I’m saying is capitalism is to blame and let’s smash the state.

    PS I’m sorry Voodoo Idol but “frat boys” are in fact into every single band that you said they weren’t. Anything that lets them seem rebellious and different they eat up. Helps get the coeds into bed.

  31. jakes says:

    Every frat guy (and former frat guy) I know loves Phish. And Zappa. And the rest of the things listed. This sounds like the quote of someone who is young enough (or old enough) to believe they are a special snowflake. If it is better with a beer or a bong or a BOSE, frat boys like it. The list is so fratty.

  32. Ny says:

    Wow, Middle Eastern females definitely list the most culturally disparate music taste and all sorts of other really random interesting stuff. They’re the only group that lists black, white, and latin musicians.

    Apparently all (non-white) women love Alicia Keys.

  33. RowlandRose says:

    About the ‘reading level’ portion of your post: The English language can a barrier of entry to OKCupid. In non-English speaking countries, only the higher educated people who know English as a second language tend to join OKCupid. Native speakers, such as U.S. users, have no such barrier. That may be one reason why religions and races not highly represented in the U.S. are scoring better in your survey.

  34. Dick S. says:

    Apparently black guys really like “I am cool.”

  35. aceofgames says:

    This isn’t stereotyping – this is people giving away their tendencies on a platter.

    No one can be upset with the findings because the results come straight from the mouths of the people.

    Some of the things I saw from the ladies (sorry if I keep my focus on who I am interested in) was the active attempts to broadcast their femininity or lack thereof. Some of the things listed seem so obvious.

    The saddest part to me is the unwillingness of most people to go outside of their racial and cultural lines. These barriers prevent good people from finding each other and drastically cut their chances of finding the kind of people they seek. Meeting a person of another race or culture should be seen as an opportunity – not a dangerous danger waiting to pounce on them and eat them alive. If looking for someone of the same sameness worked, many of the people here wouldn’t need to be here. Many people here are doing something different by trying a dating site but commit the same dating mistakes.

    If you want success, step outside the comfort zone and give other people a look. You might like what you find.

  36. songofophelia says:

    I was getting ready to come and say what LeeLeo said. I feel like the LGBT profiles on okcupid follow different trends than what their race/sex would “normally” like. I’d be interested to see those stats.

  37. RowlandRose says:

    About the ‘reading level’ portion of your post…

    The English language can be a barrier of entry to lower-educated foreigners on OKCupid. In other words, for non-English speaking countries, only those educated enough to know English somewhat are going to tend to join OKCupid.

    Native speakers, such as those in the US, have no such barrier, That may be one reason why religions and races not highly represented in the US are scoring better in this survey on writing proficiency.

  38. Tokenwhitemale says:

    This was amusing. It’s misleading, however to call it “The REAL stuff white people like”, because, of course, your results only show what OK Cupid users of various racial groups claim to like. There’s no reason to think that OK Cupid users are a representative sample of the population. In fact, it is highly likely that OK Cupid users are an unrepresentative sample of the population.

    So, funny, amusing, but don’t make the mistake of thinking these statistics are scientific and say anything interesting about the racial groups involved.

  39. flicker says:

    hilarious how so many white women pretend to like sports and mention the red sox in their profile just to get men to date them.

  40. Shilpa says:

    D got it right on the money: “Stop saying “stereotype” when the people involved stereotyped THEMSELVES.”

  41. Smiling_Skeptic says:

    I think that rohan mis-read the graph of religion and writing proficiency levels that included the writer’s level of belief:

    “Interesting to see the correlation between Buddhism and literacy; also interesting to note that far more self-professed Buddhists list their personal emphasis on Buddhist view/practice as ‘not all that serious’, than any of the other religious groups polled.”

    Rohan seems to have interpreted the y coordinate of each triangle as representing the number or proportion of subjects with that level of belief. In fact, the graph makes it clear that the y value is the reading level of that group. The graph doesn’t say anything about how many people within the religious group have a particular level of belief.

    I’d really like to see a version of the Race and Profile Sophistication graph that divides each vertical bar up to show the percentage of each belief within that ethnic group. For instance, are Indians high scores attributable mainly to a high level of buddhists and hindus in their cohort, or do they also have a higher proportion of atheists?

    Fascinating stuff! I look forward to the next post.

  42. jaynespace says:

    @Voodoo Idol: My husband (now in his late 30’s) was/is a consummate frat guy out of Indiana still very much in touch with all his brothers, and they love many, many things you mention.

    And as for the lists: genius! Culture exists, people!

  43. Eric says:

    A few statistical points:

    1. I would like to see the statistical significance on these figures, as I am skeptical of the results. Are these actually more accurate than taking random groupings and getting results? Also, how big is each ethnic demographic?

    2. What about omitted variable bias? Many of the comments have already talked about this, but what if another factor (age, seuxal orientation, SES, level of computer literacy) shows radically different results in each category, rather than lumping “all self-identified asian women” together, for example.

    3. What about selection bias? Is there something about the character of OKCupid that would draw people with a particular set of interests?

    OK, enough geeking out…now back to my class readings…

  44. RWang says:

    no KARAOKE for Asians?

  45. Angelos says:

    Emily, that was my thought too. I’m thankful I’m older and not in the dating pool, because trying to relate to people who read that garbage would be problematic.

    I have a local acquaintance, via social networking and IRL networking, who I really like as a person. She’s sweet and funny, and just good company. But she’s 24.

    Half her tweets are about how this or that or the other romance or vampire thingy is “amaaaaazing.” It gets annoying. But like I said, not my issue, really.

  46. Wing Girl Kim says:

    Love this. Though, being an Asian girl, lip balm is the only thing on that list I would put. I’m definitely NOT simple. Am I more like a white guy? I LOVE motorcycles, Coen brothers, metal and hard rock, Big Lebowski. I see some white girl too…Hmm…

  47. Jennifer says:

    Native Americans like fry bread, sitting bull and smoke signals, duh.

  48. Marvin says:

    I REEEEALLY wish OKC’d do some of this type of analysis with sexuality in mind sometimes.

  49. BackJenny says:

    There must be a direct relation between affirmative action programs and writing proficiency level. i know as a white male, I will never qualify for collegiate grants or scholarships, so why try? Props to the minority and the athiest for having such a cool environment to progress. God Bless America.

  50. Jacob says:

    Can you break out a word chart for Jews? Otherwise, I seem to be asian, which will probably confuse everyone.