I’m the first to admit it: we might be popular, we might create a lot of great relationships, we might blah blah blah. But OkCupid doesn’t really know what it’s doing. Neither does any other website. It’s not like people have been building these things for very long, or you can go look up a blueprint or something. Most ideas are bad. Even good ideas could be better. Experiments are how you sort all this out. Like this young buck, trying to get a potato to cry.

We noticed recently that people didn’t like it when Facebook “experimented” with their news feed. Even the FTC is getting involved. But guess what, everybody: if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site. That’s how websites work.
Here are a few of the more interesting experiments OkCupid has run.
Experiment 1: LOVE IS BLIND, OR SHOULD BE
OkCupid’s ten-year history has been the epitome of the old saying: two steps forward, one total fiasco. A while ago, we had the genius idea of an app that set up blind dates; we spent a year and a half on it, and it was gone from the app store in six months.
Of course, being geniuses, we chose to celebrate the app’s release by removing all the pictures from OkCupid on launch day. “Love Is Blind Day” on OkCupid—January 15, 2013.
All our site metrics were way down during the “celebration”, for example:
But by comparing Love Is Blind Day to a normal Tuesday, we learned some very interesting things. In those 7 hours without photos:
And it wasn’t that “looks weren’t important” to the users who’d chosen to stick around. When the photos were restored at 4PM, 2,200 people were in the middle of conversations that had started “blind”. Those conversations melted away. The goodness was gone, in fact worse than gone. It was like we’d turned on the bright lights at the bar at midnight.
This whole episode made me curious, so I went and looked up the data for the people who had actually used the blind date app. I found a similar thing: once they got to the date, they had a good time more or less regardless of how good-looking their partner was. Here’s the female side of the experience (the male is very similar).
Oddly, it appears that having a better-looking blind date made women slightly less happy—my operating theory is that hotter guys were assholes more often. Anyhow, the fascinating thing is the online reaction of those exact same women was just as judgmental as everyone else’s:
Basically, people are exactly as shallow as their technology allows them to be.
Experiment 2: SO WHAT’S A PICTURE WORTH?
All dating sites let users rate profiles, and OkCupid’s original system gave people two separate scales for judging each other, “personality” and “looks.”
I found this old screenshot. The “loading” icon over the picture pretty much sums up our first four years. Anyhow, here’s the vote system:
Our thinking was that a person might not be classically gorgeous or handsome but could still be cool, and we wanted to recognize that, which just goes to show that when OkCupid started out, the only thing with more bugs than our HTML was our understanding of human nature.
Here’s some data I dug up from the backup tapes. Each dot here is a person. The two scores are within a half point of each other for 92% of the sample after just 25 votes (and that percentage approaches 100% as vote totals get higher).
In short, according to our users, “looks” and “personality” were the same thing, which of course makes perfect sense because, you know, this young female account holder, with a 99th percentile personality:

…and whose profile, by the way, contained no text, is just so obviously a really cool person to hang out and talk to and clutch driftwood with.
After we got rid of the two scales, and replaced it with just one, we ran a direct experiment to confirm our hunch—that people just look at the picture. We took a small sample of users and half the time we showed them, we hid their profile text. That generated two independent sets of scores for each profile, one score for “the picture and the text together” and one for “the picture alone.” Here’s how they compare. Again, each dot is a user. Essentially, the text is less than 10% of what people think of you.
So, your picture is worth that fabled thousand words, but your actual words are worth…almost nothing.
Experiment 3: THE POWER OF SUGGESTION
The ultimate question at OkCupid is, does this thing even work? By all our internal measures, the “match percentage” we calculate for users is very good at predicting relationships. It correlates with message success, conversation length, whether people actually exchange contact information, and so on. But in the back of our minds, there’s always been the possibility: maybe it works just because we tell people it does. Maybe people just like each other because they think they’re supposed to? Like how Jay-Z still sells albums?
To test this, we took pairs of bad matches (actual 30% match) and told them they were exceptionally good for each other (displaying a 90% match.)† Not surprisingly, the users sent more first messages when we said they were compatible. After all, that’s what the site teaches you to do.
But we took the analysis one step deeper. We asked: does the displayed match percentage cause more than just that first message—does the mere suggestion cause people to actually like each other? As far as we can measure, yes, it does.
When we tell people they are a good match, they act as if they are. Even when they should be wrong for each other.
The four-message threshold is our internal measure for a real conversation. And though the data is noisier, this same “higher display means more success” pattern seems to hold when you look at contact information exchanges, too.
This got us worried—maybe our matching algorithm was just garbage and it’s only the power of suggestion that brings people together. So we tested things the other way, too: we told people who were actually good for each other, that they were bad, and watched what happened.
Here’s the whole scope of results (I’m using the odds of exchanging four messages number here):
As you can see, the ideal situation is the lower right: to both be told you’re a good match, and at the same time actually be one. OkCupid definitely works, but that’s not the whole story. And if you have to choose only one or the other, the mere myth of compatibility works just as well as the truth. Thus the career of someone like Doctor Oz, in a nutshell. And, of course, to some degree, mine.
Fascinating cool stuff. Love your dry sarcastic humor with it.
This bit of history makes me appreciate Ok Cupid more. However, there’s nothing that can be done for the fact that attractive short and truly feminine lesbian women with substanance are few and far at age fifty-something. I’m shallow enough to keep looking and hoping one might pop up who’s attracted to the soft “boy” in me.
Thanks for the blog
First blog post in three years; took 3 years to write a new book; the book is coming out soon…
You actually lied to people using your site? And you found people weren’t guinea pigs so much as they were lemmings. None of your staff has, apparently, any psychological training or they’d have known Milgrams’ experiments long ago pretty much predicted the results of the game you made of people. Those experiments were later judged to be unethical and cruel and there are now standards in psychological research, which you ignored.
Just because you are able to collect data the people give by using your site does not mean you should. Smashing the data together to reinvent fire might be fun for you but all it shows, as does this blog post, is that you are lazy (read some psychology instead of playing with data), arrogant and manipulative. I sincerely hope this book is severely criticized when it comes out if these admissions are what it’s about, and that you have the keys to the data taken away from you. You are wise enough to drive.
Like most of the women I’ve talked to who use online dating, I go by the rule that if he doesn’t have a photo posted, he’s married. That’s an automatic disqualification – I don’t even bother to look at the profile. Interestingly, very few of my high ranking matches don’t post photos (maybe because men I’d be interested in would by definition be open about their marital status?).
I think it would be interesting to have a ‘Love is Blind’ day, (or have an ongoing option) where you could tell whether or not the person had a photo posted just to eliminate the ‘cheating married man’ factor.
One other comment – years ago, before we had photos on dating sites, we were forced to read and look for substance. Met one of my ex’s that way.
But what about the theory that opposites attract? I don’t want my future partner to be a mirror of myself.
This is hysterical. I couldn’t stop laughing. I only heard of OKCupid recently and I think it is the best site out there. Of course, I haven’t met one man I’m interested in and I’m only looking for friendships. But the potential is there. What I like most about your site is that you’ve got lots of questions for people to answer and the questions don’t have to be answered. I also like that we can see everyone (men and women, gay and straight) and that we can specify what kind of relationship we are looking for. By the way, I’ve never paid attention to your suggestions for matches. Also, looks mean nothing to me. I’m very particular and I love being single, but it’s fun seeing who is on OKCupid and being open to the possibility of finding kindred spirits here. I find I like some of the women and would like to have friendships with them.
I used to wonder why the total match score might be over 90% but the match scores on the individual scales of ethics, lifestyle, etc. might be in the 60%s. It didn’t add up.
I also wondered why OKCupid keeps sending me people it thinks are good matches when obviously they are not, based on my criteria.
After looking at the photo I used to look at the person’s profile of religion, children, and pets to see whether we match and then go straight to the “unacceptable answers” to see if there were any deal-killers. Now the “unacceptable answers” section has been removed. In addition, the questions consist of all 600+ questions that the person made up that I haven’t answered, which are useless. Because of the removal of “unacceptable answers” and the site not showing me just the questions we both answered, it is now a useless time-waster and I don’t use it anymore.
This site is a trip ! Women want to meet a nice guy and you send a message and they never reply. Really I know four guys on this site and we get overlooked , we work , we are stable, have money etc etc. Never judge a book by its cover. Also when I see you reply selectively I won’t even bother writing you a message cause I figure it is a waste of time and you will never respond anyway. So a lot of women do get over looked . At 45 yo if some one takes the time to send you a message you should respond back . It is the right thing to do regardless . Some women contact me and I say hello and am very polite. The cyber work can be a lonely place
Thanks for blog. like it. How can I search for people who answer particular answered questions a certain way. That would be useful and time saving.
Interesting blog and experiment. I’m not sure when you played with the numbers but I did find previously that the numbers didn’t really match my interest in profiles here. I came to doubt whether the programming had any real significance. However, I did meet a partner here with a high match and we are remarkably compatible. You may feel the need to tweak things but why fix something that works. I’d be good, however, to have a couples looking for couples aspect. Perhaps something for the future.
In future, subjects involved with experiments are usually volunteers and are told they are a part of one. You have a powerful tool here and you’ve broken a cardinal rule of social experimentation, informed consent. These things could be challenged in court in future. Though I’m sure your legal department considered the possibilities. And you thought it worth the risk.
In this day and age such experiments are normal. So no shock horror there. Actually if not anything you learn a bit about yourself. How much you’re influenced and persuaded by certain factors. No matter what the machine says in terms of compatibility, ultimately you’re the decision maker. I’ve got to say I haven’t really taken notice of that rating.
As for getting responses, I have to agree what previous commentators say. Men who can’t even be bothered to tell a little bit about themselves, or try to strike up a conversation by saying hey beautiful/sexy or such likes will not get a response from someone who is looking for something other than flattery or a bit on the side. If that’s what you’re looking for then I guess that’s the right way to go about finding that person. At the end of the day if you weren’t behind a computer screen would you strike up a conversation with a woman you meet face to face like that. Be yourself eventually you will eventually find someone who is compatible with you. By the way showing your bods in pics guys might get us looking, we might say hot bod, but I doubt for most women out there it’s the determining factor whether to meet you or not ;P Good luck and enjoy.
hay so nise
Did not find anyone on your site that interest me.
Most of them turned out to be scammers.
Una
What good is any experiment if half the profiles are scammers…or men that don’t really exist?
there is alot of false on Cupid….
Hey guys. When you’re gay and your dating pool is miniscule (about 3-5% as big as straight people’s), it’s hard enough to find people without you messing with us so you can play “science experiment.”
Very straight focused and a lot of lesbians use your site. Are the stats different for women seeking women??
Thanks for “coming clean” without too much defensiveness. The mystery of your actions, was worse than the truth, so we both know shit about dating. Hey, do you think me writing this will help me get dates:) Louis
It seems Okcupid has used its users insteqd of the other way around. Manipulating date for personal experimentation whilst the users involved had no idea they were experimenten upon or that someone played with their life choices.
A very bad set of moves Okcupid. Unethical and not done by any respectabel provider of goods or services. You just lost another subscriber, how’s that for your experimental outcome?
I wish you wisdom, may it arrive swiftly.
Robin.
In my experience, the more good looking (and separately) thinner the woman, the less she puts on her profile. Unless she isn’t actually looking for someone, then she fills in her profile, especially telling what she is not looking for.
Also, the sheer male to female attention given to the opposite gender per capita on this site is disheartening.
Under the original system, I was labeled as cool and good looking, and most of the messages I send out are ignored once the opposite gender view my profile. Even though my profile is comprehensive, I’m educated, and good looking.
Overall it seems to me that men are merely more desperate then women, and because we are more likely to send messages then women, we can be culled, since we are more interested to hooking up then they.
As a final note, it seems to me that since dating sites have taken over online matchmaking, getting to know people via chatrooms and other social events and gatherings is down.
It is hard enough to “wade” thru the Nigerian scams, the posers in prisons with internet access and just plain bad people to figure out who is worth dating on here. Then, we find out that the people in charge of the web site have been stacking the deck in order to experiment with us. What kind of world have we become? Since the web site wants to experiment, I suggest that bandwidth is opening up enough across the country that the web site starts video meets, where an individual actually sees and talks to the person on the other side of the screen. It would most certainly expose most of the scams on here. A local person could ask questions of another local person, and be able to discern if they were real. A bold step! Come on web site…..?
Okcupid has crossed both social and business ethical boundaries. Every dollar spent should be refunded immediately. A formal apology should be extend to all users. The better business bureau should be involved. The ignorance of okcupid defending their course of action wiould not hold up in the courts. The village idiot can’t charge for providing medical services and later claim social testing. In a proper society the idiot is locked away hugging himself in a padded room. The same should happen to any okcupid personnel involved in this unethical practice.
All this and you still say a 33 yr old guy with cornrows, posting pics of his kids, who looks like a sad criminal, and who thinks homosexuality is a sin (I am clear about homophobia being a no go in my answer to that question), whose answers only match 73% and differ on THE MOST important questions (I’m clear that I don’t want anyone who uses any kind of drug or smokes anything) is an “exceptionally good match”? Obviously my dog is designing your experiments. He’s smart, though, and recently stopped peeing indoors.
Eden Blackman’s response to this blog is completely lame and mostly written to generate interest on his site …
OKC wrote to the people who they’d experimented on … If you didn’t receive notice, then you prob weren’t a guinea pig …
Would be good to get a response from someone who had been experimented on on their thoughts on this, for OKC to reveal how many of them stayed on with OKC after the experiment, and if OKC made them A-list users for life …
I have been on okc for about 6months….at first it was super fun and exciting…but…it has too many fake people pretending to be someone else… the one date I’ve actually been on, it was obvious she was mainly interested in a free meal. So I’ve only met people pretending to be someone else..a girl who just wanted a free meal…I wish you spent more time trying to find a solution to weeding out the “catfish” type people…I understand this is free so you can’t complain too much..I also noticed that the main group of women on the site are single women with kids…which personally I don’t want because I want my own kids and don’t want any baby daddy drama or maybe he left her because she had baby mama drama…well…im willling to keep my account up and just see where it goes…but i definitly am bored with okc at the moment…hope this helped in some way
So you’re the reason why I can’t get a decent date and constantly ran into shitty woman on this site…thanks assholes.
Disgusted.
Violation of trust.
Manipulation of feelings.
This meager apology is a joke.
Individuals making these decisions are not quality human beings.
I enjoyed this blog until I got to the title of the book you are suggesting we buy. I’m not a Christian and am tired of being told what to do by them and their ilk. I feel so disappointed… just when I was beginning to enjoy OKCupid, all of my paranoid anti-Christian delusions are stirred up like a nest of vipers!
For all your talk about experimentation, you must not have experimented very hard on this blog to end it on such a non-universal note. There are lots of people like me, trying to lead decent and generous lives, who have been scarred by misguided elements of the Church (call it the Crusades Complex) and do NOT want to be associated with that religion.
And I thought I was beginning a really good day! Just as I pressed SEND the picture of the book came back into view and I read the title as it is. Wow. But still, an author who writes a book called “Who We Are” with a name like “Christian Rudder” was just asking for the sort of response I just wrote on my first coffee of the day. I hope he’s a Jew. I hope he’s a Muslim. I pray he’s a Buddhist. But why didn’t he change his name? It is so parabolic!
Hello and thank you for conducting that intrusive experiment. I’m not sure if I was at all involved in your study or not but I did notice the matches or woman that I spoke with were less likely to message me back. Online dating is already frustrating with its overly picky woman and to hear that the dating site your using kinda sucks. Oh well I guess
I understand what you mean Cyanny. I just think the potential sale of a book on a blog post that stirs everyone up against them is tacky. I know that intellectual property has the highest ‘potential’ profit, but so tacky…
I used to have written in my OK Cupid profile: “You think we are a good match, not because OK Cupid says we are.”
I have found, more often than not, that my high match percentages were absolutely not matches for me at all.
Once Blind Love finds his glasses, he won’t be blind anymore. If that little experiment were done today, trust me, if one party wasn’t interested, the other would never hear from them again. They’d disappear faster than a crack vial around Rob Ford. To be brutally honest, I would be guilty of this myself.
The process of weeding through candidates on dating sites can be exhausting. I am a veteran of the online dating scene and have discovered that it is simply people that have changed. 12 years ago, when Lavalife was popular, I went on a lot of great dates, had some short-term relationships, then finally met someone I was with for 5 1/2 years. I discovered that it was people that had changed, but I did too. I saw so much BS that turned me off….not just, yes, married men, but men looking for a woman so specific that I suggested to some they go to a lab, a la “Weird Science.”
On Ok Cupid (which I referred to as “OK Hipster,”) it seems like everyone is the same–they have an insatiable appetite for travelling, they ride bikes, most would never admit to watching network TV, they are vegan or vegetarian, they are involved in some artistic or musical pursuit. The first paragraph of their profile lists every place they have ever lived. In their “You Should Contact Me If” section, they list a “bonus points if” that is usually so far-fetched, you’re like, “huh? No!”
Dating being so difficult these days has everything to do with the sense of entitlement people have, the fact that they think they deserve everything, won’t settle until they get it. Everyone wants the bigger better deal.
I can say that I definitely am picky. But things like, I live in Brooklyn, I don’t want someone who lives in Canada. Things that are important to me like loving dogs because I have them, not having a criminal record, and not having any communicable diseases.
So OK Cupid, like anything else, is “buyer beware” (even though it’s free.) If anything, the fact that people believed what OK Cupid told them about being a good match with someone who wasn’t, just shows how stupid people are, and that people believe what they’re told.
When the news broke yesterday about the experiments, my reaction was, “Um….DUH!”
In the last few weeks, I have been on a few dates with someone who was listed as a 60% match. Turns out he is a 100% match. I am hoping to be done weeding through the muck for a good long while. If not, at least I’ll have some fodder for convo about being a lab rat.
I’m one of the people that actually pays for A-List. I do not appreciate being experimented on without my express consent.
You know that people were upset with what Facebook did and that it’s being investigated for it, so you decide to do the same thing anyway completely disregarding your users’ feelings on the matter, and then try to hide behind humor so you can pretend that’s okay.
Why on earth would I continue to pay a company like that? Especially when I can just go back to using my Ad-blocker.
just because you are funny and smart and somewhat charming doesn’t mean it is cool to match people who are not in fact compatible just to measure the behavior. it’s marginally ok to study true behavior data based on mutually agreed upon parameters but the deceived guinea pig thing is not OK with your equally smart and funny subscribers, it will only make us skeptical and self conscious which I’m guessing is not (statistically or otherwise) a great combo for hooking up with the right date. you’re getting weird, dude. as we all know Zuckerberg is an asshole no matter how you define so-called success, please don’t emulate the guy.
I really hope that this experiment will help improve things on this website, I actually changed my pictures into much better ones with no serious change in the attention I get though. It’s been six months since I dated a girl from here and not for the lack of trying.
It’s not surprising that the site examines its theoretical intent. What IS surprising to me is that the site user was unknowingly participating in the analysis. I feel a bit put off by this knowledge. Yet I admit that it shows integrity to come forward with this revelation.
Something mentioned in the analysis rather confirms my private suspicion regarding human interaction. Looks matter more than the inner person. Way more, apparently. Not that it should be this way, in my opinion, but that people commonly are persuaded more by appearances than by ideas when it comes to mating dynamics is something naturally instilled. Survival of the species is the program and the individual is a mere pawn in nature’s game. No wonder the rate of divorce is so high! Lawyers have no need to fear for their financial security.
Maybe logic and reason simply have no place in emotional relationships! They don’t appear to be entertained very much anyway. However, if two people find they don’t get along after that initial attraction has lost its glow, it is because they established no lasting basis for the partnership. For this reason, perhaps we ought to be more cautious and take more time to know the potential partner even prior to meeting them.
But then, we are surrounded by impulsive idiots!
I encourage all A-List users who are upset about this to cancel their subscription (at least temporarily). That’s the only way you know they’ll listen to you.
here’s one but I am sure everyone knows… about 90% of the ladies on online dating services are scammers or want a credit card number . So that leaves the other 10% who never reply or if they do they are looking for Joe millionaire yo know the guy with his own private jet and boat. What happened to the ladies that are looking for for a night out and if that went well another date. I am talking real here this cyber crap ain’t all its made out to be. I have paid out a lot of money to place an ad on these sites and end up paying more because you can’t chat with anyone with out all the high dollar features you find out about after the girl you wanted to meet isn’t there any longer. Tell me whats with all the tokens or boost up crap I thought once you paid your monthly dues you could speak to others of interest.. not!
You have no idea what is going on on your site. Women are getting scammed right and left from some of your members. These ” members” are lying like dogs and taking advantage of every woman that they can. These men are telling the woman they are from there state and they are really in Nigeria. They are
Not here to be part of your social experiment
Doing medical facial analysis and thus knowing the subjects personality from the photo, I do need to read the profile. The face does not lie. Actually that is the title of a book on facial analysis. Most people do facial analysis somewhat unconsciously. N wether they admit it or not, sex sells. Without it, no human race.
It is what it is. You have to ‘read between the lines’ to evaluate profiles on any dating site. I agree with the blogger about religion questions. Answers should not be from a pull-down list, but if you do that, yet need more choices, like Religion? : “No, thanks.” ” No thanks!” ” Who cares?” Religious people are all hypocrites, so why not expose their true intentions to exert control and coerce them to be like them in order to trap someone into a relationship? At least OKC tries to allow people to delve deeper and expose more of their personalities than the more superficial sites. By the way Drugs? Is a worthless question. I have not seen any ‘yes’ answers, so I know a lot of them are lying. No one will admit to using on a public forum open to NSA snooping.
They are swindling money out of women because they are on business trips and some excuse that they need money to get back. I know 3 women that are going to JAIL because of these men. You can’t imagine how many of them me and my friends have met. They are on every dating site. Screw your experiments. Some one is going to get sued.
I know this site is free and your TOS includes verbiage that says you can possibly do this kind of crap (but maybe not! I hope someone tries a lawsuit!), but, not cool. Not cool at all. I noticed that something had been awry because I look at people’s responses to the poll questions, and it would say that I agreed or disagreed with something in a way that was untrue. I _thought_ you were just stupid, OKC, but apparently you were _evil_. I hope you got a lot of money out of this, and maybe it will assuage the nightmares you have in the future from being total douchebags.
This was all very interesting. I think your site is way better than Pof. Can you please bring back the journals?
I’m not even sure how long I been on this site but, just like the other site I’m on I get no luck at all I have no idea what I’m doing wrong I can’t be that extremely ugly that I’m just getting nohere very very frustrated!
Thank you for posting this article. To SpecialEd, I’d like to say that Milgram’s experiment took place in 1972, and I am fascinated by THIS research that OkCupid has accomplished, to determine whether post postmodern users, those of us who grew up in an entirely different digital and social context from 1972, are still the same. And we are! Still just as shallow and just as easily influenced by whatever institution we subject ourselves to. And in this case, the accuracy of the data given the sheer mass and computability of online subjects makes this blog post doubly relevant and interesting. The fact that we all willingly engage in what is obviously a social experiment, OkCupid, completely evacuates our right to be miffed about being researched on. OkC, thank you for sharing and please, keep playing with the data so long as you share eventually. I, for one, am really interested in 21st century definitions of “community”, and “appropriate” behaviour.
How interesting that this is the first blog post in three years and it comes after such controversy over your “experiments.” Do you really think “explaining” how it’s such cool science makes any users feel better about being possibly manipulated in such a callous way?
Addendum:
Perhaps everyone on the site should be required to display their Meyers-Briggs classification underneath their photo! This would signal what their INNER being looks like.
I never realized I was this shallow. I am going to stop judging people only by their photos. Great blog
So if you’re treating me as a guinea pig when I’m paying for your product, how about you give me (or everyone, for that matter) a free six months of A-List Membership? I mean, since apparently you’re lying to us and potentially telling us that a 30% match is a 90% match, I’m not even sure why I’m giving you money.
Yes, we look at pictures. Have you asked us what we look for in the pictures? A persons actual appearance is less of a concern to me than the pictures they choose to post. Is there a cat or dog in every single pic? Do they look drunk or stoned in their main profile pic? Does their actual age match what they put in their profile? How about weight, how about race or gender presentation? Is their picture sideways or blurry? People lie in profiles. The pictures people choose to post tell a lot aboit them beside their specific appearance.
Also, 4 messages is not a conversation of depth. 4 messages won’t get most people to a coffee date and some won’t even give you their real name by that point.
What you’re doing isn’t science. There are too many uncontrolled variables. And it’s not very attractive art either. It’s just misleading people. The fact has already been established by real science that humans are realy bad at predicting what will make us happy. So you could have saved yourself some money and had fewer people pissed off at you if you’d used the time to read some real science instead of screwing around with your customers’ perceptions.