The Big Lies People Tell In Online Dating

July 7th, 2010 by Christian Rudder

Nerds. As we all know, the Internet is a great place to pretend to be someone you're not. For instance, here's me in Second Life having a great time:

Anyhow, in many online situations, self-misrepresentation is totally harmless. Like, who cares if your Halo 3 avatar is taller than you are in real life? Or if flickr thinks you're single when you're really married? But in online dating, where the whole goal is to eventually meet other people in person, creating a false impression is a whole different deal.

People do everything they can in their OkCupid profiles to make themselves seem awesome, and surely many of our users genuinely are. But it's very hard for the casual browser to tell truth from fiction. With our behind-the-scenes perspective, we're able to shed some light on some typical claims and the likely realities behind them.

Let's get started.

"I'm 6 feet tall."

REALITY: People are two inches shorter in real life.

This whole post was inspired by an amusing graph we stumbled across while trying to answer the question Do taller guys have more sex? The answer, to a degree, is yes, and I'll expand on that in a little bit. But in this case what was more interesting than the sex was the (supposed) tallness of the guys.

The male heights on OkCupid very nearly follow the expected normal distribution—except the whole thing is shifted to the right of where it should be. You can see it better when we overlay the implied best fit below (pardon the technical language):

Almost universally guys like to add a couple inches. You can also see a more subtle vanity at work: starting at roughly 5' 8", the top of the dotted curve tilts even further rightward. This means that guys as they get closer to six feet round up a bit more than usual, stretching for that coveted psychological benchmark.

When we looked into the data for women, we were surprised to see height exaggeration was just as widespread, though without the lurch towards a benchmark height:

On a somewhat humbling personal note, I just went back and looked at my own profile, and apparently I list myself at 5' 11". Really, I'm a touch under 5' 10". Hmmm.

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As for whether it even makes sense for people to make such an obvious and easily disproved exaggeration, the jury is out. We've found that taller people, up to a point, have more sex:

But as far as messages go, shorter women actually seem to get more attention:

These are the average weekly unsolicited message totals by height; you can think of these as the number of times a person is "hit on" out of the blue each week on OkCupid. a 5' 4" woman gets 60 more contacts each year than a six-footerThe genders are plotted on different scales because of the eternal fact that men almost always make the first move, so women get many more unsolicited messages.

It's plain from these two charts that women six feet or taller are either less attractive to men or are considered too intimidating to message. The data also raises the interesting possibility that these tall women are much more likely to sleep with a man who does approach them. Compare the 6' 0" woman to her 5' 4" counterpart: the taller woman gets hit on about two-thirds as much, yet has had slightly more sex partners.

"I make $100,000 a year."

REALITY: People are 20% poorer than they say they are.

Apparently, an online dater's imagination is the best performing mutual fund of the last 10 years. Here's what people are saying on OkCupid, versus what their incomes should be:

Use the slider to watch as people exaggerate more as they get older. As you can see, people advertise disproportionately high salaries for themselves. Just to pick a symbolic amount, there are consistently 4× the number of people making $100K a year than there should be.

Note that in formulating the "expected" lines for each age we were very careful to adjust for OkCupid's particular demographics: we compared every individual against the average not just by age but by zip code. Here a breakdown by gender of the exaggeration rates:

A woman may earn 76 cents on the dollar for the same work as a man, but she can fabricate, like, 85 cents no problem.

As a public service, we've decided to make our income calculations available. The following widget will calculate the statistically expected income of your potential matches; you give it a gender, an age, and a zip code, and it'll spit out a salary. Then you can confront your dates about exactly how much money they probably do or don't make. Fun!

The Patented OkCupid Income Revelator Machine


most likely income:
$
Gender:
female
male
Age:

Zip:


. . .

We did a little investigating as to whether a person's stated income had any real effect on his or her online dating experience. Unsurprisingly, we found that it matters a lot, particularly for men. This is a by-age messaging distribution:

These bold colors contain a subtle message: if you're a young guy and don't make much money, cool. If you're 23 or older and don't make much money, go die in a fire. It's not hard to see where the incentive to exaggerate comes from.

"Here's a recent pic."

REALITY: The more attractive the picture, the more likely it is to be out-of-date.

The above picture, for example, was over two years old when it was uploaded. How do we know? Most modern cameras append text tags to the jpgs they take. These tags, called EXIF metadata, specify things like the exposure and f-stop settings, gps information if your camera has it, and, of course, the time and date the photo was taken. This is how programs like iPhoto know when (and sometimes where) you've taken your pictures.

Analyzing this stuff, we found that most of the pictures on OkCupid were of recent vintage; site-wide the median photo age at upload was just 92 days. However, hotter photos were much more likely to be outdated than normal ones. Here's a comparison (the age of a picture below is how old it was when it was uploaded to our site):

As you can see, over a third of the hottest photos on the site are a year old or more. And more than twice as many hot photos are over three years old (12%) as average-looking ones (5%), which makes sense because people are more inclined to cling to the pics that make them look their best

Another useful (if somewhat unorthodox) way to take in this graph is to follow the horizontal gridlines. If you trace out from "20%", for example, you can see that 1 in 5 average-looking photos is at least a year old, meanwhile, among the hot photos, nearly 1 in 5 is at least two years old.

It also turns out that older people also upload older photos:

The upshot here is, if you see a good-looking picture of a man over 30, that photo is very likely to be out-of-date. Not to get personal again, but my own OkCupid photo shows a Burberry-dressed 27 year-old, strumming away on his guitar. Meanwhile, I turn 35 in a couple months and am writing this post in the same shorts and tee-shirt I've been wearing for a week. Time waits for no man, unless that man doesn't update his personal information.

"I'm bisexual."

REALITY: 80% of self-identified bisexuals are only interested in one gender.

OkCupid is a gay- and bi-friendly place and it's not our intention here to call into question anyone's sexual identity. But when we looked into messaging trends by sexuality, we were very surprised at what we found. People who describe themselves as bisexual overwhelmingly message either one sex or the other, not both as you might expect. Site-wide, here's how it breaks out:

This suggests that bisexuality is often either a hedge for gay people or a label adopted by straights to appear more sexually adventurous to their (straight) matches. You can actually see these trends in action in the chart below.

Again, this is just the data we've collected. We'd be very interested in our bisexual users' thoughts on this single-sex-messaging phenomenon, so if you'd like to weigh-in please use the comments section. Please note, everybody, that we don’t assume that bis should be “into both genders equally.” We only assume that they should be into both genders at all. The swaths of red and blue that you see in these sexuality charts represent people who message only one gender. The purple areas are people who send any messages, in whatever proportion, to both men and women.

In this chart, throughout the teens and twenties, the male bisexual population is mostly observably gay men. By the mid-thirties, it seems, most of these men are more comfortable self-identifying as gay and have left the bi population. By the end of our chart, 3 of every 4 bi males on OkCupid are observably straight. Meanwhile, the proportion of men who message both women and other men holds fairly steady.

The proportions for women are more consistent over time:

12% of women under 35 on OkCupid (and the internet in general, I'd wager) self-identify as bi. However, as you can see above, only about 1 in 4 of those women is actually into both guys and girls at the same time. I know this will come as a big letdown to the straight male browsing population: three-fourths of your fantasies are, in fact, fantasies of a fantasy. Like bi men, most bi women are, for whatever reason, not observably bi. The primacy of America's most popular threesome, two dudes and an Xbox, is safe.

. . .

In gathering data for this last section on sexuality, we found so much interesting stuff that we're making it the topic of our next post. We'll look at the messaging, searching, and stalking (!) patterns of gay, bi, and straight people and see what else we can learn about the sexual continuum. Until then, no lie: thanks for reading.

OkCupid's data scientists, Max Shron and Aditya Mukerjee, contributed additional research to this post.
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118 Responses to “The Big Lies People Tell In Online Dating”

  1. Person

    Doot, paraphrased:

    Everyone likes dick.

    the end

  2. Matt

    Fascinating as always, but your data doesn’t support the conclusion that “taller men have more sex than shorter men”. Instead, it supports the conclusion that “taller men are more promiscuous than shorter men”.

    Maybe shorter men tend to have fewer partners, but longer term? Maybe not, but the data doesn’t really tell you who’s having more sex.

  3. Gyt

    This was WAY below standards for an OKTrends post. Lesson to be learned, make sure the staffer that typically writes these things reviews anything an intern (or this person if they aren’t an intern) writes.

  4. Rev Willy

    This is absolutely fascinating stuff!!!!

    Kudos to the ….. i don’t know what to call them …. the okcupid people? Kudos to them for thinking this stuff up. Actually, what i think is, the okc crew are in reality social scientists posing as match makers. LOL And doing a damn good job of it too.

    I would have never in a hundred years, have recognized that the data available here could be used in such an insightful public service manner. To say nothing of cooking up the techniques to grab it and make it meaningful.

    Again, Kudos!

  5. bernard

    RE: the bi-analysis. did you only include people who identified as single? possible that bi-girl and straight-boyfriend are on OK?

  6. Ryan Moulton

    This is consistently the most interested blog on the internet. Keep them coming.

  7. David

    I wish OKC would incorporate the EXIF metadata into the site – not directly of course, but an average percentage – “This person’s pictures are more recent than xx% of their peers!”. OKC is above average for everything else, so I don’t see why they couldn’t.

  8. ERIC ENGLE

    Duh, I don’t need okcupid to get gay sex I have never ever had any difficulty at that tyvm. On the other hand, as a way to figure out straight people yay okcupid. SO yeah, I list myself as bi most my messages are to chicks but you know why? Because I don’t need a dating sight to go cruising.

  9. zzita

    many or most bisexuals, like myself, go through phases in life where we are primarily interested in one sex. and other phases where we are primarily interested in the other. it’s just a normal part of being bi.

  10. alefbet

    This post needs metric units and the income/age-grid for women also for side-by-side comparison. Otherwise, so much win like always. I especially enjoy any chance of feeling moral superiority: I’m exactly as short as I say…

  11. Anonymous

    I’ve actually noticed working in the tech industry that guys tend to be taller than your average citizen. Perhaps online guys are just taller than the average U.S. demographic?

  12. Alex H

    I don’t think your salary calculations give very meaningful data.

    In my age/location demographic (San Francisco Bay Area men around 30), the calculator provides salaries that are two or three times less than what I’d expect for my *dating* demographic (college-educated professionals). I posit that OKCupid has a disproportionately higher number of people in my dating demographic than the general population. Especially if the underlying data includes families, where not everyone is a wage-earner.

    Such a difference would be further exacerbated if you consider the shift of professionals waiting later in their lives to marry, as described in “Red Families v. Blue Families.” It’s not surprising that you’d find this demographic of people on OKCupid. So, the data doesn’t necessarily indicate that people lie about their income, but it may actually be the case that people on OKCupid make more money.

  13. S

    This research is highly biphobic and quite infuriating. OkCupid is using a narrow definition of bisexuality according to which not only all bisexuals have to be interested in both men and women (rather than a variety of genders, not all of which have to be male or female), but we also have to do that at the very same time. In addition, this statistic does not account for real-life practices, behaviour, fantasies, social surroundings, sex, romance, relationships and all the other elements that make out a person’s sexual orientation.

    This research is obviously (and painfully) ignorant of the entire field of bisexual studies and bisexual theory, using outdated and conservative definitions and research presumptions.

    How about learning something about the topic you’re looking into before you go and deny the existence of an entire sector of the population?

  14. Justice4ll

    really, does grammar turn a girl off? What a fucking waste of life that person must be. It’s a dating site, not a goddamn job resume. That’s why these things are needed at all, these websites. It’s because sickos like to go shopping for mates. If you met someone in person you nut case, would you make the guy write down an essay before you determined if you want to give him your number? Get real, you just proved why you’re here.

  15. Max

    Worst part about this? People that read this are going to think I’m two inches shorter than what I put on my profile, which would be inaccurate: I am what I say I am. Just because it doesn’t match the distribution of the world doesn’t mean OkCupid has a perfect distribution of all the possible heights, jumping to the conclusion that everybody lies.

  16. Loreliene

    Self-identified bi, here. (Who is among the ~20% who message both.)(Men more often than women, because the selection of non-straight women on OKC in my locale is very, very small. But I digress.) The “Bi, but” phenomenon exists off-net, too.

    (1) As you note, gay people sometimes identify as bi to – presumably – ease their or their close ones’ anxiety. That your data suggest this is a stronger trend among men than women conforms to the popular saying that “Men are gay, women are bi” – for some reason, men are more likely to be polarized and women are (relatively) more likely to be bi.

    (2) Physical attraction and partner-search don’t often correlate. There’s a pretty big percentage of bi people who acknowledge that they are attracted to both sexes, but are only interested in establishing a relationship with one. In this case, identifying as “bi” is an honesty clause – “Just because i’m not interested in marrying another women doesn’t mean I don’t look. (And I don’t want you to give me any prejudiced shit, so i’m telling you right now.)”

    (2a) Sometimes people are physically attracted to both genders but emotionally to only one. I’m specifying it separately because this one isn’t about social comfort and also, it serves to illustrate the complexity of bi identity.
    (2b) The amount of prejudice involved is immense. Identifying as bi *can* be a defensive measure – “My last boyfriend threw a fit when he found out I had kissed another woman and liked it, even though I was clear that i’m with him now/am not interested in women in a serious manner, and I don’t ever want to be in this situation again, so let’s scare people off.”

    (3) Curiosity clause: someone declares an intent to try for either, and probably means it, but other behavioral forces are at work.
    (3a) Younger people may identify as bi until they figure things out for themselves.
    (3b) Mid-range adults an up (after the first divorce, etc.) may identify as bi because, well, it’s the second experimentation stage of life in Western society.

    (4) And then there’s the Small Places clause: someone’s geographic range holds match-able people of only one sex.

    (That said, I have to say i’m somewhat horrified by those numbers and would kind of like to tell behavioral-polarized who identify as bi “Thanks a lot for convincing the rest of the world that bi people don’t exist!”)

  17. Shelley

    As a Psyc. student who is female and 49 years old, I have found this to be quite interesting. I look forward to further posts on this and other subjects. I am on O.k. Cupid and the new site on Face Book. It’s a trip of discovery!! Keep up the good work guys and girls !!!!!

  18. ForReal

    This is retarded..are these stats anywhere close to the truth? I’m exactly 6′2″, as my profile suggests, and I’m poor as shit..being in college full time drains your funds.

    I can’t imagine that so many people pad their height several inches to be able to claim that we’re most likely lying. Maybe you’re lying. :)