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. Fafalina says:

    Yikes! I’m a blond, blue-eyed woman with glow-in-the-dark white skin – the ONLY thing that I match with on the “white women” list is “I’m blond”…no big suprise…I’m a non-hispanic Latina….lots of hits for me on the Latina list. Rarely get the option to claim that as an “ethinicity”, usually only have the choice of “white/caucasian” or “hispanic/latino”….I always end up putting “other”….hmm, maybe that’s why dating sites never worked for me??

  2. onandon says:

    There are no data on multi-racial people because they do not fit the convenient stereotypes presented here. It would be too complex, especially since mixed races represent the future of humanity. It will take a while, but one day we’ll all be mutts!

    This survey analysis shows that this sample of people are generally uneducated and shallow. It must be easy at OKC to find like-minded simpletons to hook up with…

    I’m cool and I fucking love eating sashimi while listening to merengue!

  3. Tom Davidson says:

    Am I alone in thinking that “Alicia fucking Keys” sounds totally badass?

  4. eric says:

    *looks at the stuff white people like*

    *edits profile*

    *purposely skews data*

  5. Wm Joseph says:

    I wanted reply that there was the difference between soul food and “Soul Food” and totally got schooled.

    I forgot it was a teevee show as well as a movie.

    And I totally don’t think I have much in common w/the Black guy list despite being a Black guy.

  6. epic562 says:

    Georgie Porgie… shut up man. As an atheist yes i got a kick out of the previously stated portion of the report but it just reiterates what we already know… so enjoy it.

    Rubbing it in peoples faces and acting like a prick doesn’t do us any good and in the end just emphasizes the preexisting negative stigma most have towards those of us who have no faith in a higher being.

    To be completely honest if both sides argue to a T’ you come to one final argument.

    “who created your god” “who created your atom”

    Agree to disagree…

    On a side note I’d be very interested to see this run the same way but by region, not race. I.E. Usa, Canada, Australia, Mexico… etc

  7. Kev says:

    totally true what someone said up there–I’m sure we all right pretty down-home on here. Some people get more pleasure from using vocab than others. I swing both ways, personally, but then again I’m an atheist with strong religious feeling. ;-)

  8. JoJo says:

    @rohan: I don’t think that chart says that “far more self-professed Buddhists list their personal emphasis on Buddhist view/practice as ‘not all that serious’.” It just says that those who say they are “not all that serious” write at the highest reading comprehension level.

  9. Kari says:

    Sorry to anyone who got all upset, but I personally thought this is hilarious. Not only were they accurate depictions – stereotypes wouldn’t exist and grow if it wasn’t an actual average view of a certain group of people – but they were hilariously informing.
    Good article, it was nice to see that I didn’t actually fit into my own group’s stereotype. :)

  10. Abby says:

    I am disappointed because I am a white female, but Canadian and I dont even know what a lot of stuff on the white list is >.>…jodi picoult and all the other names I have never even heard of before. :'(

  11. Ambie says:

    Wow, I like nothing on the White People list. I only have like 5 in comparison on the Asian list. I’m Caucasian.

    This is wrong. lulz

  12. Abby says:

    The only things that even stood up in my mind were…well i do like romance novels and i love camping….but just last weekend I was on a canoe in the middle of Algonquin park watching the sunset, either way it makes me curious to see how different the stats would be from different countries and also different ages. I am 22 and that seems like quite an old list….my top interests would lean to video games more than sports and punk music more than country.

    Still I did like the article :) Its a lot of fun :)

  13. Servius says:

    Most telling is that none of the groups wrote above the 9th grade level.

  14. Dan Howells says:

    Please, please,. _please_ make sure you don’t hyphenate the word bisexual next week? Using “bi-sexual” is like asking Trek fans about “that Doctor Spock”… I bet you already know this, mind.

  15. Chuck says:

    I used to work at a social networking site and once in a while I’d look at the stats. One of the funniest things I observed was the disproportionate number of “Native Americans” on the site. It turns out that a lot of white Americans call themselves “Native Americans” to separate themselves from the Immigrant Americans.

    A lot of ignorant people out there….

  16. Franz Biermann says:

    @Kat “…but rather than educated Christians choose not to include their faith on their profiles, whereas educated members of other faiths and atheists do”
    ” Jumping to the conclusion that because not many of the well-written profiles proclaim a Christian faith could just as much be a reflection of the aggressive atheist mentality that labels Christians as less-intelligent”

    that is incredibly short sighted of you. The same argument could be made of atheists. Stereotypes of atheists: worship satan, are immoral and do terrible things, they hate religion, they are angry and arrogant. I am sure there are probably the same percentage of atheists that do not wish to label themselves that for fear of being stereotyped, as there are intelligent christians who are doing the same thing. Your argument is stupid.

  17. Christopher says:

    I’d love to see this broken down into sexuality, if for no other reason than to see how many gay men describe themselves as “average” or “the boy next door”.

  18. Pogo says:

    I’m a white male who doesn’t have an account on OKC, has a steady girlfriend and isn’t looking to attract any new ones.

    I can safely say that I am not in any way offended that that the only items I have in common with the TOP 50 MOST FREQUENTLY MENTIONED items among white males are the comedy films.

    I also haven’t tricked myself into thinking that this article was intended as a way to accurately predict what a person likes based on race/gender (despite the section headlines, which astute readers may realize is a reference to the title of a popular book). I didn’t see that claim mentioned anywhere in the article. Again, this is a compilation of data based on information provided by existing users (presumably single ones at that), and it’s the top 50 recurring answers. Maybe White Males’ top answer # 51 was “Alicia Fucking Keys” and you wouldn’t know because this is the most relevant sample. This is the information that people want other people to see. There are probably a lot of white guys who love Alicia Fucking Keys but don’t mention it in their essays because it’s a guilty pleasure for them.

    The whole point of this article is to examine what patterns emerge in the information provided by people identifying with a particular race. The article specifically explains Race [A] is shown to more frequently mention Self-Description [Y] or Cultural Staple [Z] than Race [B]

    Notice that there is a mixture of interests and self-description. People are listing interests and traits that (not to imply that they are dishonest or misleading) they think their potential mate wants to hear.

    The other thing to keep in mind is that the list is drawn from how frequently an item is MENTIONED, it’s not pulled straight from a list of “What is your favorite [X]?” Pulling from an essay is probably more likely to draw fewer consciously-altered results, but take a look at the list for Indian Men. I have a hard time believing that “idiots” are high on the list of Indian Men’s favorite things, but maybe it’s a big topic of conversation among Indian Men who have accounts on OKC (especially considering how many of them are apparently engineers and probably have plenty of interactions with idiots on a regular basis).

    Lighten up, people. It’s data, not an equation.

  19. v says:

    this is a funny joke.

  20. Eli says:

    True facts: prior to the Stamp Act, when (white) people (colonists) talked about Americans, they were talking about the people who were in the country when they arrived, IE, Native Americans. After the Stamp Act, when a separatist movement emerged, the colonists began referring to themselves as Americans and the people who were here first as Indians.

  21. Eric says:

    Brilliant! This is exactly the sort of thing that makes the Internet wonderful. Thank you for taking the time to post this.

    I laughed out loud when I got to the line about the lip balm!

  22. Jake says:

    I don’t think this is far from the truth. I am Caucasian, but more importantly Atheist.

  23. _antipathy_ says:

    My problem with this is that presents itself as a study of “race” (a made-up concept) when it’s really a study of culture.

    Servius: “Most telling is that none of the groups wrote above the 9th grade level.”

    I’m sure that’s just the average of all the profiles used. Obviously, there are OKC user s who write above a 9th grade level.

  24. jon says:

    I’m a white guy and I don’t know half that stuff on the white list. Who the heck is Tom Clancy? Wasn’t Phish some awful band from the 80’s? Blazing Saddles??? I think my grandpa made me watch that movie and it wasn’t funny at all. There’s no way white people like this stuff, we’d be the lamest race out there. I mean The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?? Are you kidding me. Can I be asian? Is there an asian family that will adopt me?

  25. UnagiElf says:

    It’s interesting that Asians LIST Sashimi, yes, but I think though man Americans may have a preference for sashimi when they to to a sushi restaurant, they stick it under the general heading of Sushi. I for one would order mostly sashimi if it weren’t so damn expensive.

  26. mothwentbad says:

    I looked up the metric that they’re using, and… it only counts letters per word and words per sentence. So that’s kind of crude at best. A few overwrought sentences in one profile and an honest admission of “I like cheese” in another could manifest as a difference of several grade levels, which may not be all that fair.

    It could be that theists mix up short and long sentences for variety and style, and atheists are a bunch of pedantic wankers who like to navelgaze over every detail for sentences on end.

    Ah, what can you do?

  27. yah says:

    Yah, but Abby, nobody cares about Canadians. Go sew a maple leaf on your backpack and leave everybody else alone.

  28. Pete says:

    How many people that didn’t reside in North America take part in this? With this being a US based site and by sheer population alone there’s going to be a strong bias. It’d be interesting if you tried this in the UK I think there would be some surprising similarities across the board.

  29. Creamygnome says:

    I think any of the things from my profile that show up on your charts have “I hate” before them.

  30. Rita says:

    You research folks behind the scenes here at OK Cupid are wayyy cooler than I imagined!

    Keep up the great work.

  31. Joan says:

    So this is from a largely urban dating & networking population.
    It’s not a random sample and not age stratified. Not science.

    With those limitations, I had a lot of fun with the cultural terms, familiar and unfamiliar.
    As an older white woman, I was laughing about what I have in common with other groups.

    These are clues for a terrific party!

  32. Paronomast says:

    I agree with Pete (2 posts up) – most of these lists definitely seem to have a US bias. I’d be interested to know what the geographical spread was. As always, very interesting analysis – keep up the good work guys!

  33. adsfd says:

    Great! Now write a program to create fake user profiles based off the database, and we can officially get the end of humanity off to a good start.

  34. RossMed says:

    Interesting! I am a black female, and the only thing I’d ever mention as a like on the black female list is Justin Timberlake. I had no idea that JT is the favorite white boy for black girls! I do like him so I guess there is something to it….

    More interesting: when I read the list of “likes” of the men, which racial group do I have the highest number of matches? ASIANS. Black and White men’s lists, I get a couple of hits. Asians… NINE!!

    I’ve been wondering about dating Asian men too… hmm…

  35. Kat says:

    @ Franz Beirmann
    Why is my argument stupid? I did not say that there were not potentially intelligent atheists who also do not post their beliefs. Perhaps I should clarify: I came out of a highly intellectual institution at which Atheism was very widely accepted, and Theism branded you as stupid (or at least least intellectual then your atheist peers). I do not deny that atheists get slapped with unfair labels too. However, this was a chart of linguistic complexity used in profiles, which we are crudely translating to intellectualism.

    So the potential label of “un-intellectual” would specifically deter the more educated Christians from posting their beliefs, while those less concerned with education might not care. The labels of satan-worshiper, etc, that might be mistakenly applied to atheists would not specifically deter intellectual atheists–if anything they would deter the less intellectual atheists. My point was that atheism is, at least in my experience, more acceptable in a highly academic environment than theism is. The atheists that I knew were very out-spoken about it, while the Christians I knew generally kept it to themselves.

  36. Jadedone says:

    I’ll be another “this doesn’t apply to me”, but I never did fit into the stereotype for my race to begin with. I get so many comments about how “unique” my profile is, I think that it means to some people they are surprised that it came from an oreo.

    For the poster who indicated black women have an obesity rate of 50%, that is incorrect.

    http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/templates/content.aspx?ID=6456

    The obesity rate is 36% (still horrible), the obesity rate for those who are overweight is 50%. Reading is fundamental.

  37. Jadedone says:

    Oh, but I do love the JT and have that on my profile.

  38. Alexia says:

    Haha! Just when I thought my female asian-ness was uniquely far from the norm, you go and throw in the practicality of lip balm. :) And Burt’s Bees has been in my profile since Day 1.

  39. morpheo says:

    this sounds to me like i’m… just not human. wtf?

  40. Jadedone says:

    Reading is fundamental for me too, because I just read the shocking four out of five stat at the top. OOPS.

  41. skier732000 says:

    I like what onandon had to say – the typologies available force us to select one of the particular categories, but many of us are already mutts, which means the composition of types one is forced to select (ok, we could pick “other” or “undeclared,” but I’d bet almost nobody does) is a good deal less crisp than is apparent on their face (so to speak).

    I’m 3’10”, a eunuch, and live in a refrigerator box, but who would answer my messages if I said so on my profile?

  42. Biff says:

    Am I alone in thinking that “Alicia fucking Keys” sounds totally badass?

    Yes.

  43. shit says:

    this is ridiculous. only an idiot would care either way. your racists

  44. Mark says:

    Tom Davidson says:
    September 9, 2010 at 1:09 pm
    Am I alone in thinking that “Alicia fucking Keys” sounds totally badass?

    Yes

    But “fucking Alicia Keys” is another matter

  45. Aaron says:

    Can someone forward a plausible theory for Malcolm Gladwell’s prominence on both male and female Asian profiles?

  46. Anon says:

    A friend directed me to this, and I have to say that it seems rather specific.
    The fact that golf is high on the white list and football (any kind) is not high up there says a lot.
    A lot of this seems middle aged in nature and if anything, appears to reflect more the type of user who is inclined to join OKCupid than it does entire race.

    I’m willing to bet that if studies were conducted elsewhere in a 18-30 range at, say, Myspace… the results would be dramatically different. That UFC/MMA was low on the white guy list also seems rather fishy.

  47. JPdelatorre says:

    As a White/Latino Atheist I feel probably religion and culture are more representative than race when it comes to interests. But, you have the data, you tell me.

  48. Joe says:

    Do you think the world is better for this? what is the point? I hate stereo typing people! nearly everyone dose it but its wrong!

  49. ME says:

    Hold up, I agree with Biff. Alicia Fucking Keys is pretty badass.

    I’m a black female and some of our top phrases really sadden me … but then the general popularity of those things bothers me. Zane books are ridiculous and never fail to disgust me! (I do like romance novels and erotica fyi)

    In all though, I’m not bothered that I share many interests with others in my group. I mean, soul food (the, er *food* @Wm Joseph) and The Color Purple are pretty awesome.

    I think its telling that white people’s profiles mention nature and hand-skills more than most. It reinforces my suspicion that other races (in America, at least) have been systemically separated from nature and self-sufficiency.

    Oh, and my other suspicion that Religion is mostly used to keep people ignorant and susceptible to control? Closer to confirmation.

    PS: I use eyeliner, mascara and lip balm. Just saying.

    I loved this post! But then, I always enjoy OkCupid articles … all of y’all are awesome in my book! (Programmers, data analysts, designers, etc)

  50. Melvis NotElvis says:

    I think I would REALLY like fucking Alecia Keys… er ahh.. I mean Alicia Fucking Keys…