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."
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.
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,

LOL this is great! And I have to say to all those who got supremely upset about this, chill out! The “data” presented is very specifically stated as coming from one major website that spans most of the states. That’s it. Someone spent a LOT of time compiling this data from OKC… it’s not stereotyping, it’s not racial… it’s just taking what people wrote ABOUT THEMSELVES and comparing it to others of their same race/sex to find the similarities. And it’s really fucking hilarious (not to mention quite interesting to find the types of things commonly used among these groups on this site!)
So, again, CHILL. It’s all in fun, and expressly stated as info from OKC. LOL thanks for the laugh Christian! (And I’m looking forward to the bi/gay one also LOL)
Hey howcome nobody mentioned pancakes? I love pancakes! =(
I loove reading these, the statistical analysis you do is excellent.
I think that OKTrends should do an article sometime on transgendered and genderqueer people (and that OKC should change its profile options to reflect a wider array of gender and sexual identities) and another article on polyamorous people.
That would be really great to read.
What is “Coz?” (the #1 thing that Asian females like)
I would love to see the correlation of reading level with highest degree obtained/current occupation (there are many PhD students).
Seriously, “the red sox”? That doesn’t seem very likely, given a random sample of members fro around the globe, that “the red sox” would appear in the most used phrases. Even if the sample was random from around the states… really, “the red sox”, are there really that many Bostonians (that’s where the red sox come from isn’t it?) that they totally overwhelm OK Cupid?
Just seems a very suspect result to me.
ohh damn! reading this I realized i was really a black woman. wish my skin color and melanin followed suit.
To Emily,
If that’s the case, why did the Latino women like Twilight? Pretty sure that’s mainly about sparkly white guys with some Native Americans thrown in.
We should also keep in mind that these are samples of the racial groups ON OKCUPID, a site that skews white & middle class. Thus there will be smaller samples of these races that may not be representative. Even saying that, I don’t really see the reason for this survey. I suspect the POC members of this site get enough racially insensitive come-ons (or rejections) without this crap adding to it. Hell, I’m feeling a bit ashamed of white women right now. Nicholas Sparks? Dear god.
I am white and can only spot one thing on the white people list that I can relate to. I feel frustrated with this compilation.
i thought that the racial part of this was rather funny. i found most of those things to be true
I believe the relgious part of this isnt very true. im catholic and i got into every university that i applied to with out a problem what so ever. so im pretty sure that my literacy level and writing proficiency is a lot higher than an 8th grade level. i dont think that your religion and how serious you are about it really correlates with literacy. im pretty sure that that has more to do with an individuals education and the type of school they went to. Thats just my opinion
Also, its really said that a lot of you dont know who Alicia Keys is. That is a shame lol
Excellent data and SO well written! I love you guys!
Stereotypes? Maybe. But nothing I see here is anything to get upset about.
We have to remember that our society as a whole isn’t completely racially ambiguous. For many people, race = culture. If you grow up treasuring god in a black community where god is treasured, aren’t you more likely to list it as an interest than a white man whose family has a passion for boating?
There’s no point in being offended over them, they are just number of the majority. I dated a white guy who loved The Kite Runner. I’m of East Indian descent and I thought it was somewhat overrated. In fact, there’s only one or two traits in the East Indian profile that I can relate to. I’m not offended about it. But when I think of East Indian culture… well, this is kind of dead on.
You also have to keep in mind that these are statistics, we are individuals. Women on general earn 77% of what their male counterparts earn. I earn 187% of what my male counterpart earns. What’s the FIRST rule of crunching numbers? Correlation does not equal causation. There are so many reasons why people pick these interests. Someone already came up with an explanation for “soul food”. To deem these results as cumulative is just stupid.
And all the author means to do is write content that is interesting. It can easily be dismissed. This isn’t a scientific journal. Take a pill.
Funny how atheism is referred to as a “faith-based system”
@khichri: Native Americans would like employment, running water and electricity best.
this is fucking amazing!
My latino friends are totally fucking hilarious.
FAN FUCKING TASTIC
(obviously I’m white)
I’m not surprised at all by these results, especially the writing proficiency ones. It’s basically an iron-clad rule of psychometrics that non-Asian minorities score lower than whites on tests of cognitive ability. The order is usually Asians on the right side of the curve, then whites, then latinos, then blacks. This tracks well with the graphic above.
This same phenomenon also explains the religious differences. Protestants are likely on the bottom in writing proficiency because that group probably contains a larger percentage of blacks who would likely have a lower average level of writing ability. Similarly, the Catholic grouping probably contains large numbers of latinos. Furthermore, for many of the latinos, English is probably not a first language. Likewise, many of the Buddhists are probably Asian, and the rest white. Also, Jews score even higher than Asians on IQ tests; they are obviously driving up the average for Judaism, but those who are only ethnically Jewish (not religious) are also probably significant segments of the atheists and agnostics.
Hererin lies the fallacy of math. What about CODE and SUBTEXT? Ex.: “Justin Timberlake” might be code for “likes to dance and doesn’t have a beer belly” for black women and “God-fearing” might mean “I am not a coke dealer or even remotely scary” for black men. Just guessing/extrapolating, since I’m neither. Or maybe “surfing the net” means “give me a life, plz!” and “Van Halen” might be code for “of a certain age and still not getting laid.” Oops–have I offended anybody yet?
I think your next project should be an analysis of stated age v. desired age range.
Now how about seeing how much the gals’ and guys’ lists have in common? Looks like with the white folks, all they have in common is Nascar and the Red Sox. No wonder we need a site like this. (And I am sunk. My second favorite team is the Yankees, And my first … oh, forget it.)
At least the Latinos have merengue in common…
There are alot of music bands. When I think of stuff I like, that’s not usually my first or second choice. Oh well.
Re: black women & Justin Timberlake: black women also apparently like Christ a lot.
People that are stress music seem to be ahem…. not as smart as me…
If your chose things that were statistically distinct between groups. why then was Tom Clancy mentioned by three groups, White males, Asian males and Pacific Islander males?
I question this because of the rating for Robert Heinlein. While I love his work, he’s not very well known outside the geek community, which leads me to believe that the data is completely skewed
This is brilliant. I’m pretty sure it breaks down into such clear stereotypes because the types of people that are generally going to bother to use OKCupid are more…mainstream? Don’t stretch outside of their culture and/or pop-culture very much? As is the case with…most people…everywhere?
How did you classify Filipinos as Pacific Islander? They’re Asians!
i love indianss gals but they are too orthodox, cringe even if u touch them accidently so i prefer filipina ladies. they are very open and do sexula talk sometimes to my amazement. some even offered to show their nudes to me. but i hesitated and wont that. period.
This is fascinating on many levels. Would you concur though that this is not so much what people like, but rather what people think the opposite sex would find most attractive? Normally observational research is less skewed than it’s inquiry driven cousin, but since this is profile info for the audience of attracting the opposite sexx, then I suspect, it’s a bit aspirational.
I would be interested in seeing more analysis as well as more data on okcupid’s pop. V. General pop.
Keep it up.
P.s. apparently I am an asian female and I never knew!
Ok, maybe some Asian girls can tell me, what’s Coz? Bill Cosby?
The one major, screaming caveat in this is that the analysis is, let’s remember, of dating site profiles. Thus, many people will present an image of themselves that they believe that their preferred partners would like to see. Maybe white men choose to say that they “can fix anything” not because that’s what they believe, but because they believe that their preferred partners (chiefly women, who may or may not be white!) want to hear. Maybe white women choose to mention “diet Coke” because they believe that their preferred partners would like them to be weight conscious.
The latter note is particularly interesting, because there have been studies that show the disconnect between what members of one sex want, and what members of the other sex THINK they want. The study I have in mind had to do with physical build. So, it turned out that while men did care about weight, they didn’t care about weight nearly as much as women thought they did. Similarly, men thought that women cared a lot more about a muscular build than women really did. It would be very surprising if gross physicality were the ONLY common error!
This is not to say that I believe that the survey covers half a million lies, of course, but it’s worth keeping in mind that this is a likely bias. And it’s a tricky one, because it blurs the racial boundaries—e.g. a white man who wants to date Asian women may bias his profile in a direction that he thinks will look favourable to Asian women. (And he may be wrong…)
I still love the whole thing, I find it fascinating (taken for what it’s worth), and I got as much of a chuckle as anyone out of the “reading level by religion” bit (can you guess, from this comment, what I am…?). But let’s keep in mind that although it clearly measures something, it’s not 100% clear what it’s measuring!
What I don’t see here is any information about the degree to which each group diverges from the total population. The “stereotypes” that have been derived here might only apply to a relatively small percentage of the population in question, but they show up because 1. The phrases are different from the main population 2. There is some sub population that strongly agree on that phrase.
So for example, what I would like to see is what percentage of black women actually list soul food? 2%? 5%? 80%? that would actually put a reasonable sense of perspective on these results.
i noticed that white people dont brag as much like “i’m a funny guy” or “i’m so cool”.
this was a great article by the way. very informative.
It’s interesting that “philippines” and “filipino” are among the highest scoring words for “Pacific Islanders. The Philippines are islands in the pacific, but Filipinos are NOT Pacific Islanders! Like Japan and Taiwain, that’s part of Asia. Pacific Islands include those in Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia.
I wonder why so many Filipinos don’t consider themselves Asian. (And oddly, it doesn’t seem to apply to Filipinas, just men.)
More ways to separate mankind and distort reality. YAY :o(
I don’t believe 95% percent of the results. Dave Chapelle would have been on EVERYONE’S list.
That’s for sure!
This seems more than a bit biased. What sort of grading scale did you use? The chart just seems like someones opinion. Atheists score off the charts when protestants and catholics score at the bottom … that doesn’t seem to be the case in American society.
++ on LeeLeo on showing results for gay vs. heterosexual. Also, co-varying for level of education may or may not wipe out the writing proficiency vs. religion effect.
It would also be interesting to see male/female interests broken down by level of education. (SWPL does refer to a specific sub-population of WP)
I’d find this much more convincing if the stupid site didn’t keep telling me “like” vegetarian and dancing, both of which I’ve specifically mentioned not liking. Maybe you should write another article once you’ve master the advanced concept of “not.”
My favorite part is how atypical it highlights me to be. I love Regina Spektor and Amanda Fucking Palmer.
I have a different reading of the Latino results: Latinos are concerned with differentiating themselves from the term “Latino!” All the top results are categories that are primarily of use, especially in profiles, of distinguishing taste, nationality, and cultural formations. The term Latino is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too broad. So are the other categories.
Here’s what “humans” like: Vanilla.
(And that’s not a dig at “white” people. It’s just that overgenerality results in meaningless results.)
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the secret merengue/bachata dance club to confer with all the other Latinos. It’s right next to the soul food restaurant.
Sorry OKCupid, this survey is a total misread, that as usual with surveys, says more about the mindset of those constructing categories than that of the population ostensibly being measured.
A GLBT version of this would be absolute gold, IMO. Although given how well OKC knows us by now, it must already be in the works. :p
What’s with the Red Sox obssession?
re: comic sans version of the Bible–it exists, you can be sure of it. I had a comic book version of the Bible growing up which was absolutely horrible.
@AC: not to get into semantics but atheism and agnosticism are not degrees of the same thing. One refers to belief/lack of belief in something and the other refers to knowledge/lack of knowledge of something.
As an example, I would qualify as an agnostic atheist, in that I do not believe in any gods but I don’t claim knowledge that this is the case. I just personally don’t buy it. Obviously as a human being with limited facilities I can’t claim it impossible, I just personally find the idea implausible to the point of disbelief.
Likewise you can be an agnostic Christian or a gnostic atheist or gnostic Muslim or agnostic Hindu. Claiming knowledge of some truth isn’t the same as belief. Think about the religious folks who take pride in not knowing but believing all the same.
Not making any judgments as our beliefs are our own business but it’s a peeve.
@Vooodoo Idol: Sorry, but with the exception of one or two of those, I can think of quite a few “brahs” that are into all of that. Punk, jam bands, scifi, etc. are all big if you get enough dudes together even if it doesn’t fit the whole Animal House stereotype. Lots of the frats when I went to school had as many guys into computers and bands as there were into wet tees and keggers…often they were the same guys. Never was my scene but while there are a lot of common interests, there were still plenty of individual ones even if they were subsumed by the urge to conform.
Great compilation & promotional article. This is kind of random, but hopefully the webmaster can tell me which plugin is used for the top share feature (Digg, Re-Tweet, etc)
It’s absolutely wonderful (and I looked at the source code, and even though there is a mention of Digg Digg, it doesn’t seem to have the same features!)
so full of shit. I love how categorized and rational the white guy infographic is, “I can fix anything” as opposed to how contrite the black guy’s is. tryna? if ur? Next time you try to massage your ego do it at the expense of your personal life instead of shrouding yourself behind the internets.. so sad.. who uses that site anyway..
I’m asian claiming to be pacific islander (because I’ve been getting more views and messages that way). Thanks for helping me sound more pac islander. I’m now a chivalrous guy into shark week and playing the ukulele.
This is fantastic stuff! Great analysis.
I posted a response at
http://www.okcupid.com/profile/not_wilbur/journal/15973539572912105395/Self-love-%28but-not-the-mastubatory-kind%29