The Best Questions For A First Date

April 20th, 2011 by Christian Rudder

First dates are awkward. There is so much you want to know about the person across the table from you, and yet so little you can directly ask.

This post is our attempt to end the mystery. We took OkCupid's database of 275,294 match questions—probably the biggest collection of relationship concerns on earth—and the 776 million answers people have given us, and we asked:

What questions are easy to bring up, yet correlate to the deeper, unspeakable, issues people actually care about?

Love, sex, a soulmate, an argument, whatever you're looking for, we'll show you the polite questions to find it. We hope they'll be useful to you in the real world.

First—define "easy to bring up"

Before we could go looking for correlations to deeper stuff, our first task was to decide which questions were even first-date appropriate. I know each person has his own opinion on what's okay to talk about with a stranger. I also know that if I had to wade through hundreds of thousands of user-submitted questions like these verbatim examples:

If you were to be eaten by cannibal, how would you like to be prepaired?
do u own 3 or more dildos in your room?
Do you hsve a desent job?

I would go fucking insane. The basic currency of the Internet is human ignorance, and, frankly, our database holds a strong cash position!

So, instead of judging each question's first-date appropriateness subjectively, I turned to statistics. I decided our candidates were the ones that (a) most people were comfortable discussing publicly, and (b) were mathematically likely to tell you something you couldn't just guess. I sliced OkCupid's question pool like this:

That blue rectangle is our highest-quality, least-invasive questions, and we next examined each of them for interesting correlations. (If you're interested in knowing more about the above graph, you can drop-down an explanation here, complete with an interactive scatter plot that took me forever to make.)

Now let's get right to the results. This is the shallow stuff to ask when you want to know something deep:

Okay, if you want to know...

Will my date have sex on the first date?

Ask...

  • Do you like the taste of beer?

Because...

Among all our casual topics, whether someone likes the taste of beer is the single best predictor of if he or she has sex on the first date.

No matter their gender or orientation, beer-lovers are 60% more likely to be okay with sleeping with someone they've just met. Sadly, this is the only question with a meaningful correlation for women. For men there are a few others:

predictive question implied odds
of first-date sex
Q: In a certain light, wouldn't nuclear war be exciting?
'yes'⇒83%
Q: Assuming you were in the position to do so, would you launch nuclear weapons under any circumstances?
'yes'⇒82%
Q: Could you imagine yourself killing someone?
'yes'⇒82%

First, I have to give guys credit for logical thinking: in the post-apocalypse, THERE ARE NO SECOND DATES.

Also, I will never look at fingerless gloves the same way again.

If you want to know...

Do my date and I have long-term potential?

Ask your date (and yourself!)...

  • Do you like horror movies?
  • Have you ever traveled around another country alone?
  • Wouldn't it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?

Of all questions appropriate to a first date, the three listed above were the ones couples most often agreed on.

Here's how we know...

When someone deletes their OkCupid account, they have these 3 questions correlated best to a real-world relationshipthe option of giving us a reason, and if that reason is 'I met somebody on OkCupid,' they can give us their significant other's username. Many hundreds of people a day go through the trouble of doing this, so we've compiled an excellent dataset of real-world couples. Agreement on these three questions correlated best to an actual relationship.

In fact, 32% of successful couples agreed on all of them—which is 3.7× the rate of simple coincidence. These questions as a trio even out-performs OkCupid's top three user-rated match questions.

Turistas: the best date movie of all time?

If you want to know...

Do my date and I have the same politics?

Ask him or her...

  • Do you prefer the people in your life to be simple or complex?

Because...

We were very surprised to find that this one question very strongly predicts a person's ideas on these divisive issues:

Should burning your country's flag be illegal?
Should the death penalty be abolished?
Should gay marriage be legal?
Should Evolution and Creationism be taught side-by-side in schools?

In each case, complexity-preferrers are 65-70% likely to give the Liberal answer. And those who prefer simplicity in others are 65-70% likely to give the Conservative one.

This correlation is for a nationwide dataset; it won't be as useful in places where one ideology is much more prevalent than the other. For example, in New York City there are lots of people who like simplicity and yet have Liberal politics.

If you want to know...

Is my date religious?

Ask...

  • Do spelling and grammar mistakes annoy you?

If your date answers 'no'—i.e. is okay with bad grammar and spelling—the odds of him or her being at least moderately religious is slightly better than 2:1.

As someone who is not himself a believer, I found it rather heartening that tolerance, even on something trivial like this, correlated with belief in God, although I should've figured out that religious people are okay with small mistakes. Next to intelligent design, what's a couple typos?

It's also nice when two completely independent datasets corroborate each other. Last summer, we analyzed the profile text of half a million user profiles, comparing religion and writing-level. For every one of the faith-based belief systems listed, the people who were the least serious wrote at the highest level.

Proper spelling and grammar. Teach teh controversy!!!

231 Responses to “The Best Questions For A First Date”

  1. Galen says:

    So there is an inverse relation between religion and literacy. Is anyone capable of defining those words surprised?

  2. Sahtor says:

    I just wrote about top 3 user rated question “Does smoking disgust you?” and how it shouldn’t be relevant to matching. People can interpret that in many ways and I’ve noticed the yes answer being more popular (with 20-40 women). I was contemplating changing my answer.

  3. wpm400 says:

    Answering No to “Do spelling and grammar mistakes annoy you? ” seems to me to reflect anti-intellectualism, not tolerance. The least serious of the faith-based proponents write at a higher level because they are less indoctrinated in mind-numbing INtolerance, diametrically correlative with the results for agnostics and atheists.

  4. Avirroes says:

    I would just like to point out that, if I go on a date with someone from OKCupid, it is now impossible to innocently ask if they like beer.

    Thanks, OKCupid. -_-

    But seriously: As always, excellent post. Educational and entertaining!

  5. Misthios says:

    So, would it now be a very BAD idea for men to ask women if they like the taste of beer, because it immediately lets the woman know that he’s REALLY asking if she’ll have sex with him?

  6. dacomdotbomb says:

    Great article. I’m glad to see that OKCupid will still be providing good content on the blog. What happened to the critique of paid dating services blog article? That was certainly the best work I ever saw on this blog. Will that article be restored soon?

  7. Sky2042 says:

    “Next to intelligent design, what’s a couple typos?”

    Nice potshot! :^)

  8. Joseph Dantes says:

    Self identification as atheist implies a high IQ, as it does for any minority subset or abstract self-identification.

    Regularity of church attendance is the more accurate measure of religiosity.

    As for literacy and religion in general… try breaking it out by race.

    Oh right… that would be uncomfortable.

  9. Tim McCormack says:

    When you were courting Match.com, did you ask if they liked the taste of beer? :-P

  10. Rachel says:

    More! Can you do more of these? This is fantastic.

  11. Christian Rudder says:

    Ha! Yes.

  12. Kimberly says:

    This is one of the few articles where none of the data correlates to me…but then I’ve been backwards most of my life. I prefer complex people, yet I’m conservative. Spelling & grammar worry the piss out of me–I consistently edit & proofread everything, from friends’ emails to professional signs, yet I’m consider myself to be seriously spiritual/religious. The taste of beer disgusts me, yet….well, I’m not gonna answer that one–that’s a case-by-case scenario. :P

  13. OKStupid says:

    I had the SAME reaction as @wpm400 wrt grammar mistakes and anti-intellectualism.

  14. Meng says:

    Nice, although the tone of the blog seems to become more and more strongly critical of conservative values with each post. :) And although I agree, it detracts from the otherwise humorously critical-of-everyone tone. I’ll take somewhat ironic misanthropy over typical liberal arts college youth anyday.

  15. SL says:

    I also agree that the fact that the religious don’t mind spelling errors is because, as you have shown, they have a lower writing proficiency (and presumably spelling) and so they don’t mind that their spelling and grammar are incorrect. Conversely, people who are critical thinkers and logical who reject the dogma of organized religion, DO care that spelling is correct because they believe in a right and wrong (way to spell a word).

  16. Angel-Thane says:

    OKCupid guys:

    How do you know that those who ended their profiles here are in long term relationships, and not those that would end after a year? Just wondering if you have stats on that. (When I hear ‘long term potential’ I’m thinking kids or a life together, not five months)

    Also, contrary to your claim, one faith based ideology (Atheism. I’m not counting agnoticism) has higher proficiency for those who strongly believe.

  17. Diane says:

    Should we be concerned that the average OkCupid profile demonstrates only 8th to 9th grade writing proficiency?

  18. Paul says:

    I see a new trend coming in first message questions.. “So, do you like the taste of beer ?” ;-)

  19. Artie says:

    You know, even though I totally believe in Fod, I still wish I’d read this before I took a girl to a brewery over the weekend …

  20. booortz says:

    I’m atheist but don’t give a darn about spelling mistakes, grammar, etc…that often correlates with education level which sadly is beyond the control of children. Thus, “proper” dialect and grammar are largely arbitrary and generally classist.

    I do however know many other Atheists who are ruthlessly pedantic, which explains the joy they get at proving their correctness on something so trivial as a Harvard Comma.

  21. okthen says:

    But shouldn’t those more indoctrinated in religion be more likely to see things as right or wrong?

    Personally, I blame the Bible belt. We know that area is especially Protestant, and, well, Alabama is dead last in education. Perhaps attention to grammar and spelling and religious affiliation are both a product of geographical location.

  22. misswalla says:

    I find the religion question disturbing, as a religious person. Though I suppose, as you said, in the sense of tolerance it is heartening. I am concerned that it implies a lower level of education. Though in regard to your graph I would be interested to find out how it breaks down by protestant denominations. Presbyterians are known for heavily encouraging scholarship, and also believe in supporting the public school system (hence you’ll be heard pressed to find a private Presbyterian K-12 school) and the Presbyterian Church USA is also the more tolerant and better educated of the “Presbyterian Flavors” (the PCA for instance has little interest in female leadership).

    Mainline Protestant (Anglican, Lutheran [ELCA], Presbyterian, American Baptist, UCC, Congregationalist, etc.) also accept the theory of evolution as does the Roman Catholic Church. It’s mostly conservative evangelical blowhards that keep the world thinking that all Christians reject it when the reality is that they only represent the minority. The rest of us just have better things to do like helping those in need and supporting out GLBT brothers and sisters… well not all the liberal denominations are on board with that, but the ones that aren’t yet are moving that way quickly. The PCUSA is currently voting (for the 3rd time) to make some changes and each time we vote we gain a little ground.

    That said, my post is probably riddled with grammatical errors. :P

  23. ruud4u says:

    A Liberal in the US is perceived traditional in Western Europe. there are also strong differentiation is religion, can you also add a geographical layer to you’re awesome surveys (-: like them very much…

    Thanks !!

  24. David says:

    Interesting research. I’m not sure how usable it is because all of these questions are loaded as a result of this post.

    “Do you like the taste of beer?” = “Am I getting any?”

  25. shadowdiver307 says:

    @Avirroes
    @Misthios:
    Instead of directly asking a woman if they like beer then, start off the conversation with a question like this: “What is your favorite kind of alcoholic drink?” They will most likely respond with a sweeter drink ie: sex on the beach, martini, mikes hard, smirinoff, etc.
    It is at that poiint you can ask if they ” …like any specific kind of beer…”. This is where you will get your answer. They will respond either “I don’t really like beer” or “My favorite kind is….” or “I prefer to drink [martini’s, smirinoff, mikes etc]”.
    If they answer “I don’t really like beer”….your answer is no, they are less willing to sleep with you on the first date.
    If they answer “My favorite kind is….” then yes.
    If they answer “I prefer….something else….” they would more likely to sleep with you on a later date because they prefer something with a little more kick to it…something different and not boring (more options). This is corelated to guys, because most women think guys are out for just sex, and the fact they prefer more options in simple things like alcoholic beverages suggests that they are looking primarily for a meaningful relationship or would prefer to know you before getting intimate…and thats probably what they think sex is- an intimate connection between two partners- and nothing else.
    This is just my view/opinion and I have no real facts to support this theory just so you all know.

  26. rubyhat says:

    I thought your data analysis methods were quite ingenious. Now I wonder whether you all had designed features like the “make my answer public” with the intent to do this analysis, or had it just been a felicitous coincidence that it had been created, and then came in so useful …?

  27. brmble says:

    A lot of self-satisfied atheists with 9th-grade writing proficiencies in this comment section making remarks about people with 8th-grade writing skills…

  28. Anonymouse says:

    Is there a way to search for questions that you haven’t answered? I’d like to answer these questions publicly, but I haven’t come across any of them yet.

    Thanks!

  29. Mark says:

    I can solve this one in one move, inspired by a single photo above. Ask them:

    “Do you want to come over and watch Waterworld? I have beer.”

    * Beer: check
    * Post-apocalyptic: check
    * Sailboat: check
    * Traveling around the world: check
    * Killing people: check
    * Bad grammar: check
    * Horrible movie: check

    …. Oh, wait, you said HORROR movie.

  30. Subhan says:

    I’d be interested in seeing a followup in a week or two on how many people changed their answers to any of these questions now that this article has been released.

  31. Billy says:

    I find it very stereotypical to consider the religious are “stupid” because they don’t mind a few spelling errors. I’m very strong in my faith. I also critique everything I read. Listening to speakers and teachers with bad English and grammar are a huge pet peeve of mine.

  32. DeTales says:

    Very fascinating and useful. Kind of like using botany to find god deposits. In particular, having a deal of experience on a denominational religious forum, I have to anecdotally verify the religious belief/literacy portion. The grammatical and semantic errors compounded by logical errors and perceptual nonsense is appalling. I sometimes laugh in order not to be deeply troubled by the state of some of the minds loose in the world masquerading as sane. The dualism and two mindedness verges sometimes on schizophrenia.

    Since some of my family is LDS, it would be p[personally interesting to me to see that group broken out as well.

    Relative to concerns on here that the level of education in the less literate groups is lacking, I would hypothesize that the dual mindedness that is required of faith impinges on the entire sphere of reason.

  33. Bart says:

    OKthen: *Obviously* you mean the “Oxford comma”. ;)

  34. Undead_Pillager says:

    “If you were to be eaten by cannibal, how would you like to be prepaired?”

    This is probably one of the stupidest questions I’ve EVER seen. I’m spreading this!

  35. Jim says:

    OK, suppose she says she doesn’t like the taste of beer –and I find out it’s because all she has tried are anemic, light-American-lager-type beers and I introduce her to more approachable microbrews or imports –such as Belgian Wit Ales and she changes her mind and decides that she DOES like the taste of beer –does that change her likelihood to sleep with someone on the first date?

  36. Michael says:

    @SL
    I disagree. I am a liberal agnostic atheist and I couldn’t care less about correct usage of spelling and grammar. I’m reasonably well educated.
    To be honest, using critical thinking and logic was the reason I gave up being anal about language; I came to the realisation that language is a fluid construct, not a concrete one. If you look at the history of any language you’ll see this to be true, especially how the spelling of words & meanings of them has changed over time. As long as the meaning of the text can be interpreted fairly easily (including in txt speak or lowercase or without unnecessary punctuation) then there is no need to worry about correct spelling and grammar.
    Being a critical thinker and logical, you should know that correlation does not prove causation.

  37. SeanActually says:

    Well thankfully I don’t like the taste of / drink beer.

    I’m also apparently posting this 1 and only post of all time, too quickly, and I shall slow down.

  38. Keovar says:

    Hmm, I dislike beer, but have no hangups about the timing of sex.

    I can easily believe that the most religious are the least literate, though. After all, actually reading the bible is a common way to become an atheist.

    Typos aren’t really a big deal, as everyone makes them, but screwing up things like their/there/they’re is off-putting. Even worse is the intentional, semiliterate gibberish of netspeak. “y r u talken lyke a fukin moran??!!!”

  39. Mike'R (@weluvmike) says:

    Dude, I am so anal about spelling and grammar, I really like girls with intelligence; but, I’m pretty smart so I am willing to make up for her losses especially if she has one’them awesome asses?!?

    I always have a crucial brain injury though so I’m gonna NEED someone to basically take care of my ass/my butt.

  40. Pies says:

    I think your data suggests that people with low writing proficiency are more tolerant of the errors others make, which makes sense, because they likely don’t notice it as much.

  41. Havisham says:

    For the record, I’m probably the smartest person posting in this comments thread and I am very religious. And no, I didn’t have to run this comment through spell check.

  42. Robyrt says:

    Yet another survey confirms, not that atheists are smart and Christians are dumb, but that America’s dumbest people are overwhelmingly Christians.

  43. Anon says:

    I think you’re missing the obvious here: Girls who like the taste of beer are more likely to drink beer, get drunk, and thus put out.

  44. Justin says:

    The solution is to go on a lot of first dates this week before everyone gets to read this.

  45. James says:

    well you say there is a link with peoples grammar and religion. If they don’t mind spelling mistakes then they are moderately religious, but there is no info on if they care about their grammar and not religious. can you disclose this info?

  46. JN says:

    The “subtle” religion-bashing in this blog still turns out to be *too* subtle for some anti-religion posters – who surely consider themselves to be quite intellectual and yet do not see the joke in authors “tolerance based” explanation. Yes, he did mean what you wrote. Google “tongue-in-cheek”. Quite funny, that.

    Also, what Joseph Dantes said.

  47. Anonymouse says:

    Anyone want to go for a beer at 5pm today?

  48. John says:

    I’m a Christian and I abhor grammar and spelling mistakes. And honestly, every single Christian I know is either possessing above average smarts or very intelligent.

    It’s a shame that some would think that because Christians or religious people are “brainwashed” or “indoctrinated” somehow dictates that they’re doomed to a lower level of literacy or intellect in all other areas of life.

    Some of the smartest, wealthiest most prominent individuals the world has ever known, does know, or will know were / are / will be religious.

  49. Farsel Tembnub says:

    Is no one horrified that the top-ranking demographic averages a 9th-grade writing proficiency?

    Also, I want to know if instant messages are included in this study, because I scarcely bother to watch what I type for those. That’s not a fair evaluation.

  50. Melissa says:

    The beer question is misleading. I love beer but will not have sex on a first date!