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. Brinidead says:

    Yeah, all white people are illiterate and stupid and bad. And it’s ok to say that, because, thank goodness, we live in an enlightened, civilised society where it’s ok for everyone to bash the percieved dominant group.

    You could just have easily made a snide insight about the data that came from any of the races, but don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

    And before you get all “Yeah, well it’s about time white people had some payback, they get everything else” (which is the typical response to any white apologism), Ghandi said “the truth can not hurt a cause that is just”. Why paint dark-grey as black, why misrepresent the truth to make your points about injustice. Isn’t the real injustice out there good enough for you? I’m sick of beatups.

  2. OCLilium says:

    Well I do love me some Diet Coke.

  3. Andjam says:

    I was initially surprised at “Cricket” being big in the Asian groups.

    In Australian English, “Asian” tends to mean from the far East – China, Japan, Indonesia. We tend to refer to Indians and Pakistanis as being from the subcontinent. However, in the UK, “Asian” can refer to Indians and Pakistanis (I learned this from “The Bill”).

    Would it be possible to see if Cricket has a different prominence in “Asians” from the UK and from Australia?

    Talking of which, it’d be interesting to see what interests are different between Aussies and Yanks.

  4. Robert says:

    I think it would be interesting to take these same samples and recalculate them based on the section of the country they are from. I live in the South, and there are not that many Asians here compared to the West Coast. My food preferences are closer to blacks than most Whites when you get out of this part of the country. Although there are some differences in “Southern Food” and “Soul Food”, they are very similar. When visiting New York in the past, if I just HAD to have some Southern Food, I learned to find a Soul Food restaurant. In the Midwest, I couldn’t find a serving of collard greens to sve my life, just corn, steak, and mashed potatoes. Likewise, I would be curious to see if Asians who grew up in the South tended to move toward the local cuisine. Do blacks who live in the midwest tend to leave behind some of the more “Southern” aspects of food and entertainment and become “whiter” in their profiles if they live in an area with a large majority white population?

  5. Post the raw data says:

    I’m going to assume the sample size for the last 3 racial groups is small. I find it hard to believe men of middle eastern descent are statistically significant to be fans of Nickelback.

  6. Jennine says:

    When creating you chart about religions….where is Christianity?

  7. Bennie Giles says:

    Too many people are taking this serious. Those are the things we all wrote in our profiles and its pretty funny. I agree that the majority of people on here write what they think the opposite sex, or same in some cases, want to hear. I changed my profile once and mentioned all of my negative qualities… financial situation, number of arrests, emotional problems,etc., and received zero hits. All of those things are what people want to know. Believe me it all comes out at some point. I have since changed my profile back to the positive truths about myself but I make it known that if you ask me something I will tell the truth. Suprisingly most women appreciate the honesty and continue to date me. Mostly because I’m not a total douchebag. Everyone makes mistakes, just be honest.

  8. Norangutang says:

    This was certainly a fun, fun experiment. Turns out, I may have lied on the census I’m a white fucking dude, not an inner-city Latina. My boyfriend isn’t German-Irish he’s a Korean girl.

    The grade level gap between the lowest and highest reading level is less than one grade. it would mean the difference between the end of 8th grade and the second semester of 9th, which isn’t much. You’re assigned mostly young literature and absolute classic favorites in both of those grades (red sky at dawn, animal farm, lord of the flies, catcher in the rye and that sort of gorgeous thing).
    These people are writing their hearts out in the hopes of getting laid. Not sending a letter of interest to their next employer or their college essays. Simple language makes you come across as likable, approachable, relaxed, funny-the kind of stuff that gets you in someone’s pants quicker than you can say “lates, c u @ coffee bro”. A phrase which the Coleman-Liau with its robotic little purpose of quantifying syllables and phrases would rate as “not English” probably. But would it get at least a chuckle out of the recipient and the sender closer to some evening delight?

    Also to be scientific, the coleman-liau rates the reading level required to comprehend a text not the grade level at which it is written. It might mean that, when on the take or prowling for hook-ups, Americans of all skin-shades, belief-systems and ages communicate like teens. I mean, it must work something like that otherwise we wouldn’t do it. Note to self: “Channel 8th grade wonder and freshman-year innocence to get the date. Be more Degrassi junior high or something”

    Did the above make you wanna get to know me better? Cos I whittled it down from a college-level until it scored an 8th grade level reading comprehension on my Coleman-Liau index.

    Another discrepancy on this assesment:
    “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.”
    Malcom Gladwell is Black-Jewish and a New Yorker, Asians of all sexes claim to like him.

    Peace out.

  9. Norangutang says:

    This was certainly a fun, fun experiment. Turns out, I may have lied on the census I’m a white fucking dude, not an inner-city Latina. My boyfriend isn’t German-Irish he’s a Korean girl. What gives?

    The grade level gap between the lowest and highest reading levels is less than one school grade. It would mean the difference between the end of 8th grade and the second semester of 9th, which isn’t much. You’re assigned mostly young literature and absolute classic favorites in both of those grades (red sky at dawn, animal farm, lord of the flies, catcher in the rye and that sort of gorgeous thing).
    These people are writing their hearts out in the hopes of getting laid. Not sending a letter of interest to their next employer or their college essays. Simple language makes you come across as likable, approachable, relaxed, funny-the kind of stuff that gets you in someone’s pants quicker than you can say “lates, c u @ coffee bro”. A phrase which the Coleman-Liau with its robotic little purpose of quantifying syllables and phrases would rate as “not English” probably. But would it get at least a chuckle out of the recipient and the sender closer to some evening delight?

    Also to be scientific, the coleman-liau rates the reading level required to comprehend a text not the grade level at which it is written. It might mean that, when on the take or prowling for hook-ups, Americans of all skin-shades, belief-systems and ages communicate like teens. I mean, it must work something like that otherwise we wouldn’t do it. Note to self: “Channel an 8th grade wonder and freshman-year innocence to get the date. Be more Degrassi junior high or something like it”

    Did the above make you wanna get to know me better? Cos I whittled it down from a college-level until it scored an 8th grade level reading comprehension on my Coleman-Liau index.

    Another discrepancy on this assessment:
    “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.”
    Malcom Gladwell is Black-Jewish and a New Yorker, Asians of all sexes claim to like him.

    Not surprising, muslims claim more devotion than christian sects. But those with a belief system of everything being nothing are really devoted to it. Wonder if the permission for cognitive dissonance of these philosophies is involved? I’ll save that guy for later.
    antro-geek out.

  10. matt says:

    Charlotte you can be bigger than that “Can your next study examine the correlation between atheists and smugness? I bet it’d be off the charts.”
    Sure you can dis people upon their beliefs but why say it? You just want to satisfy your belief that everyone must conform to your way of life.

  11. bean q says:

    back with a vengeance. make that “a f*cking vengeance”
    this stimulates my brain so hard.

  12. bean q says:

    next we have to do this same data gathering later on to see how the keywords/phrases changed…

  13. JustMe says:

    Let me guess, afwildcat 4life…you’re an atheist. Yeah, the fact that you capitalized “Atheist” and not “Christian” gave you away. Also the smugness. You reek of it. I’m not sure about you but I learned in 4th grade that if A=B then B=A. If it took you until 9th grad to figure that out maybe your smugness is less than justified?

    The fact is that a lot of these are just stereotypes. And yes, those exist for a reason, but I do believe generalization is a logical fallacy. Not everyone is going to fit into every stereotype and the fact that you think they will is…amusing, if childish.

    On a different note, seems I should be Asian…and black…and white…and Indian? I like stuff from all these cultures. But not all the things from any one culture. Huh. Guess that means my head is buried in the sand, or something.

  14. Kitty says:

    I just looked at the survey results for what blacks/whites/latinos/latinas like, and see that in your narrative about the numbers you list music as an important attribute listed by latinos/latinas. As your evidence you name four specific kinds of music that they name. But you leave out hip hop. For latin males hip hop is mentioned twice (the only thing that is named more than once on that list) and once for latina females. Hip hop clearly is important as an aspect of their latin identity, suggesting a sharing between cultures with blacks. Why overlook hip hop’s importance for latinos/latinas when writing your summary?

  15. Mike dallas texas says:

    Redneck yep , I will take that title . I also know if I had taken the time to complete a worthwhile education, and had made significant amounts of money , that I would be doing something high and mighty instead of hanging around on internet chat rooms. So don’t blame the site, don’t blame your friends, put the blame on our own redneck asses for not taking a high road with education and a high life with a worthwhile job that pays enough money that we don’t have to hang around on sites like this for a life. Please pass me a Bud (lite that is)

  16. Matthew Crom says:

    Very clever breakdown and intriguing subject. Haha, being a caucasian male in the US I have to say the trends for whites are pretty accurate even though I don’t fit most of them. Very well done :-)

  17. mamanat says:

    Whoa…all worked up in here lol

  18. Scott says:

    Speaking as a longtime member of the cracker species, I cannot say that I identify with anything on the whiteboy list. Except for Zappa.

    Yea!!!! What!?!?!

  19. Mike says:

    Men in general seem to be big on identifying their nationality.

    Women seem to be big on identifying their religion.

    The only explicitly religious item for Middle Eastern men was Richard Dawkins.

    And the top of the list for Middle Eastern women was “Different Cultures.”

    It seems that Middle Eastern dudes have a big ol’ hill made of stereotype to climb over.

    Ladies, give a Middle Eastern dude a pity handjob.

  20. Anon17 says:

    this list is bullshit.
    this is a list of racial stereotypes
    i cant believe this was actually posted

  21. Thane says:

    Any chance you can re-do this, but also crossing geographicness? It would be very interesting to see if say a black man from Toronto is more similar to a white guy from Toronto, or to a black guy from Paris.

  22. emword says:

    This may not affect the overall analysis very much, but there’s a pretty good chance that a lot of the black OKCupid users’ references to “soul food” actually are references to the movie “Soul Food.” If so, their tendency to use the phrase would remain statistically significant, but the interpretation of that tendency might be a little off.

  23. Pameal says:

    I think you guys are the” FUCKING “bomb!!!!
    Thank You
    The White Girl

  24. Mandy says:

    I’m a white female, but my profile better fits that of a white male, I adore Queens of the Stone Age and favour music over clothes and makeup any day! So, if this is the case, where are my dates????

  25. Riya says:

    FYI, there is a reason “Stuff White People Like” is in quotes in the title. There is a website and a book called “Stuff White People Like”. Obviously the title is playing off of that. Please calm your racially sensitive nerves.

    On an unrelated note, I am a half black, half Hispanic female, and I am happy to see that I have nothing in common with either group. It’s more fun this way.

  26. caity says:

    I love how people are freaking out like this is a study. There are no controlled variables here, guys. They ran a search, tagged the most commonly used phrases, and posted them to see what would happen. It’s interesting the think about which ones were most common based on, as pointed out, self-described race. That’s it. It’s something interesting to think about. No conclusions were made. Calm down.

  27. Summer says:

    I find it hilarious. And brilliant. And, believe it or not, I don’t intend to write a doctoral thesis on it, so I am not concerned too much about the science. :) It’s just funny observations!

  28. Irene says:

    Ok, there are obviously some misconceptions about how this type of analysis works.

    @ those who say they don’t ‘identify’ with their group: This is an exercise in *generalisation*, aimed at teasing out what *differentiates* one group from the others. Terms that apply across all groups, or do not serve to discriminate between groups, have no place in this sort of analysis – but it is safe to assume that there are many.

    @OK Cupid – you could preempt this complaint by publishing an absolute frequencies table/’wordle’ for each group, to allow easy reconciliation between absolute and relative tendencies

    Having worked in research/stats for a long time, I’m not surprised by the number of negative emotional responses you received – the average person has a hard time dealing with relative analysis, so it can be prudent to support it with some absolutes to make them more comfortable.

    @ those asking for more detailed splits: The power of this types of analysis comes from the sample size. The smaller/more granular the sample groups (i.e. if split out to nation rather than race, or to a group that is not large enough in numbers on the site), the less reliable the results and the more likely that false results will creep in.

    @ those crying ‘racist’/’biased’ etc.: You can argue with the commentary, but you can’t argue with the numbers. That’s the great thing about statistics :D This is simply a description of what terms are *statistically more likely* to be used by people in a group vs. people not in that group. There is no room for bias – it’s an automated analysis procedure.

    @ OK Cupid: It may pay to take a little more time, next time, to describe the analyses used as many of the readers are obviously not technically minded/lack the stats background to properly interpret the analyses and conclusions.

    And, technically, the heading should read “Stuff White People Mention More than non-White people” – whether they ‘like’ it is an inference (much is self-description) and we need to emphasise that this is discriminative analysis – not simply descriptive.

    That said, people clearly failed to read the many disclaimers so perhaps it wouldn’t help anyway ;)

    @ FordCustomline – Yea, the Buddhists and Jews are an interesting one. I suspect (personal opinion only) that the Buddhist result could be partly a function of the recent trend amongst well-off liberal types to adopt Buddhism (it’s almost a fashion in some scenes) rather than ‘native’ Buddhists. I’ve lived in several countries with negligible proportions of ‘native’ Buddhists, but a decent sized population of adult-adopters who tended to be on the more educated/higher socio-economic side of things. And Judaism has always been a scholarly religion (from what I know of it).

  29. gman says:

    I just wonder which biases are in the comments vs the data.

    For example, under Pacific Islanders the world “filipino” is the 5th word. And yet from my experience most of my filipino friends consider themselves Asian, not Pacific Islander. So, did the author choose in include filipinos in with Pacific Islanders or the the filipino members themselves?

  30. Trudith says:

    Obviously, a lot of effort went into this analysis to blend everything into a palatable portion of understanding. So much was not included, and just like crazy graph/chart people you can squash anything into a hole so it looks like it fits. One size does not fit all! I am some of every type, I found my affinities on each list, one to many. Non of it really makes any sense, it is just a long read to see if we go to the bottom. Where is Feng Shui, Chinese Astrology signs, Vedic, and how do they relate, if we hunt for our food, are we vegetarians, or do we paint our toenails, etc.?
    I am a recovering Catholic, I found Buddhism to be a wonderful religion and I suspect Catholicism, and other religions like it sprang from Buddhism. I like rice – brown, I like water, wine, beer, Italian, Thai, Sushi, and other ethnic foods. I like my Bible, believe there is a God, and a Devil, that evil is where you find it, as is goodness. Judging from all these wide sweeping statistics/studies, I think we are a confused group of people who are either lying our heads off, speaking the truth as we see it, or trying to fool others, and fooling ourselves instead!
    Statistics are a major way to manipulate the masses, relating is the name of the game. If we fail to that, we cannot get along with each other, therefore why get upset with any of this? I see this as just a superficial presentation to illicit a response from the Masses, and be part of their next study.

  31. Leonard says:

    2 entries ago you promised a post about the “messaging, searching and stalking patterns of gay, big and straight people.” Where is it?? I WANNA READ THAT!

  32. Jim says:

    ok so I know I guess I’m only half white, and half native american, plus I’m gay but I was raised believing I was white and I really do NOT fit the racial stereotypes of white people. I like maybe a half dozen of those things, and really only so-so and they are things that appear on almost every other racial list (except for country music). We need two things to really dissect this more. First of all I’d like to see one for people who identify as native american, and second I’d like to see the data compared between people who were adopted and what race they were raised by versus people who were raised by their birth parents.

  33. TJ says:

    As an black, male, engineer, I found this analysis amusing at first and then I dug into it to assess your analysis. In brief, I think you are misusing the Coleman-Liau Index or, at the very least, presenting it without enough context to make it meaningful. The Coleman-Liau Index is a readability index. so it assesses the skill level required to understand a piece of text. A low index for a block of text could indicate that it is very cleverly crafted to be clear to any reader. It could also indicate a lack of sophistication on the part of the writer. A high index could indicate a long-winded, rambling and confused narrative. It could also indicate a highly complex, sophisticated and intelligent narrative which would require more skill to comprehend. But the index won’t tell you which is the case. In other words, it is pretty meaningless on its own.

    The index itself is nothing but a curve fit to some empirical data. [index = 5.89 x (characters/words) – 0.3 x (sentences/words) – 15.8] Not exactly the kind of thing I’d want to use to draw meaningful conclusions about whole groups people. A whole discussion of the difficulties in data collection and empirical modeling is beyond the scope of this discussion.

    Good luck in your work trying to understand people by looking at their dating profiles. Maybe when you’ve put a few years into the data analysis you might have some conclusions worth discussing.

    By the way. the readability assessment for my blog post is as follows:

    Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease 66.7
    Flesch Kincaid Grade Level 7.4
    Gunning Fog Score 9.9
    SMOG Index 7.7
    Coleman Liau Index 10.7
    Automated Readability Index 6.7
    Text Statistics

    No. of sentences 18
    No. of words 249
    No. of complex words 31
    Percent of complex words 12.45%
    Average words per sentence 13.83
    Average syllables per word 1.49

  34. Neil says:

    It is negligent to equate the readability level a group chooses to use in online personal ads to that group’s writing proficiency without any substantiation. Please change the titles of the last two charts.

  35. TJ says:

    Perhaps this should be entitled “What group X says to try to get laid” instead of “What group X likes”.

  36. Laird says:

    I am totally white and there is not one thing on the white list that interests me. Is there a gay white list?

  37. Adam says:

    You claim to be letting groups “speak for themselves,” but you already pre-defined the possible “ethnicities” one may choose, and people may be choosing them for reasons other than group identity. Sure, there are signifiers beyond pure aesthetics that one might be trying to communicate by choosing “white” (why don’t you offer “Caucasian,” or even more specific, different European ethnic heritages?) instead of “Other” or “Undeclared.”

    Your data is of your own choosing. You set the rules of the game. Granted, your ethnic groupings are pretty common and similar to the census, too, but they’re socially constructed. Only in America is “white” just one race…

  38. Joey Shmoey! says:

    It is a study done by a website that deals with dating. One of how many? Countless i’d say. Therefore i’d think that it’d only be silly to get any type of charge out of this thing. I think they should start exploiting the regions of places that cause the most grief. I live in New York. Sadly I am growing extremely tired of all the 20 something bisexual girls from brooklyn that love coffee, kafka, their cat, and talking about politics. I’ll throw a number out there and say that about ooooh, 75 percent of brooklyn is 20 something, Bisexual, and an intellectual snob.

    Let’s also make mention of those oooh so wonderful ladies whose interests include, martinis, shopping, purse dogs, my girls, sex and the city, and money. Now, i ask all the gentlemen in the house. Which one of those likes turns you on most about that woman? i’m being serious. It would be a shame if someone had an answer for that.

    One more…
    The girls who write in their “message me if:” with, “If your not a creep”
    oh i guess im a creep and i can’t message you shucks. I’m glad your telling us you don’t like creeps. i can’t wait for the first guy that says oh maaaan, im a creep, i guess i can’t message her…

    on that note. thanks

  39. Avani says:

    Just an FYI, but Indians are Asians – South Asians to be precise. I’m interested – why were Indians categorized separately?

    The religious breakdown is interesting as well. It might be helpful to understand that Hinduism and Buddhism are closer to agnosticism and atheism. Neither “religions” are actually defined as religions by their “practitioners.” They’re far from it, actually. I think this explains why Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists are often clumped together, and similarly, why they (myself included) often define themselves by these words interchangeably. I was raised as a Hindu, for example, but since most people don’t know what that means, I usually tell people that I am agnostic or an atheist. This tends to convey the principles I agree with better.

    I can’t speak to Judaism and how it works in this scheme, particularly because it is a Western religion with specific dogma. However, Judaism, as opposed to Christianity or Islam, is more of a cultural religion than a religious religion in America (i.e. “I’m Jewish by culture”). Perhaps this explains for its similarities in the survey.

    Regardless, it was an interesting experiment! Thanks for the post.

  40. Kevin says:

    That is interesting how more commentary was written about white people than any of the other races else. Most likely because the writer was white and felt more comfortable poking fun at him or herself than at other races.

  41. Jim says:

    I found these results to be very stereotypical. It was especially insulting in the graph, where you put “sophistication of text in profile”. And you showed Latinos and blacks scoring lower than whites. That’s not kind, it probably isn’t accurate, and shouldn’t be on this website.

  42. Bart says:

    1.) Why is it titled ‘Stuff White People Like’? Shouldn’t it be ‘Stuff People Like’?
    2.) This is dating site data, most probably it’s lies :-)

  43. Jane says:

    All your subjects are Americans. You don’t specify that in your text. I am a white woman, what are red sox?!

  44. Marcus Aurelius says:

    Sure, not everyone of a stated race is going to have the tastes described here. That’s not the point. The article is a fascinating insight into how people are describing themselves. Thus I’ve added it to the Rule Hibernia Thumbs Up page at http://rulehibernia.com/rh-thumbs-up

  45. Blue says:

    Statistics is the most malleable of sciences.

  46. Marcus Aurelius says:

    Not everyone will have the same interests as their stated race. That’s not the point. This is a fascinating if imperfect insight into how people perceive and describe themselves. Thus a link is going up on the Rule Hibernia Thumbs Up page.

  47. Christian Rudder says:

    I will take that bet.

    Christian

  48. Mel says:

    Wait. The top interest of OK Cupid white women is a baseball team?

    Funny article. Most of the white woman stuff I haven’t even heard of, and I’m white. Or does being Jewish mean I’m not white? I forget.

  49. corpusdude says:

    I found the comments almost more interesting than the article. And I have to agree and reiterate with the earliest commenters that we are looking at outliers- e.g. NOT THE AVERAGE OF SOMETHING but rather that which varies from the ‘average'; so it’s not so much a matter of these words being compared to or contributing to racial stereotypes; and as someone above pointed out, I think, that what these words really mean is that these words signify a white person communicating an extra degree of ‘whiteness’, ‘blackness’ and so on. That people would find these words unlike their own words or their perceptions of these poorly defined concept of ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ may also be a starting point for re-examining the data or the questions posed of it. Mostly I agree with several who have pointed out that you shouldn’t take either the data or the interpretations too seriously. Fun, amusing and a GREAT read, of course, but like almost anything involving statistical measures, we shouldn’t buy in too deeply.

    WARNING- THIS SECTION FOR GEEKS ONLY -to be more specific, keywords are words that are more frequent in a compared corpus (collection of text like we have here) than a reference corpus. Of course here I’m guessing the reference corpus was the entire collection (of races, that is)- although it’s always better to compare a smaller corpus to a much larger and somehow more ‘standardized’ corpus. From a word count perspective, over 200 million words is a respectably-sized corpus, but I’m not sure from a sociological or statistical perspective what the effect of half a million people (e.g. if there were only 759 Pacific Islanders, it might constitute a sample too small to obtain statistical measures of certainty)…but I commend the author for the great presentation (graphics are awesome) and interesting synthesis.

  50. Arielle says:

    Hmm, I think I’m Asian..