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,

Rob Says:
Thom Goodsell says:
“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.”
No. Latinas also explicitly include someone of another race. Alicia Keys is black. And not Black Latina. Just black (and white, but definitely not Latina).
Just sayin’
Reading comprehension… you must be a protestant.
Just sayin’
REPLY:
“FOUR LISTS WE’VE SEEN SO FAR”:
1. White men
2. White women
3. Black men
4. Black women
Just sayin’
Agnosticism is not a religion
It is definitely wise that no one jump to any conclusions based on this. The data is what it is, but this is all very poor sociology. As for race and writing proficiency, it fits that Asians would score higher because I’m guessing America is where most the samples came from, and Asian-Americans typically come from professional/academic families. If this study was done in China, then I would expect the opposite would be true (non-Asian ethnic groups there are mostly professionals.)
And as it was said above, religion is not causative. I converted to Catholicism three or four years ago from atheism, and I think I can safely say that my writing level didn’t drop two grades at baptism.
The best way to categorize you white people group is “redneck”… anyway:
It’s worth realizing that these are not so much what lots of White people or black people or whatever love, but what are racial outliers. I feel this was not stressed enough in the article. What is a “white racial outlier” that isn’t shared by other races? Being a redneck, aforementioned, which is basically what the white columns were. Most of anyone of any race’s profiles is going to be pretty non-racial. I read profiles of all types of girls and haven’t seen much racial variance here in the Bay Area. But aggregate racial variance and outliers and you will get redneck white people, religious black women, mba engineer indian dudes, partying family oriented latinas, etc. But while those are the outliers, those outliers aren’t even necessarily that present.
Maybe “soul food” was so big because only black people mentioned them, making it a huge outlier, even if only 1% of black profiles mentioned soul food.
This is all about *outliers.*
I am a little concerned that the way the analysis was done was specifically to look at words that differentiated the races and then the conclusions drawn base on the assumption that these words define group preferences. It’s not impossible that there are a multitude of terms that everyone uses, which actually *is* “stuff white guys like” but also “what black guys like” and “what black chicks like”. Then a very very few Asians say “Jason Mraz” in their profiles but **no one else does**, and that becomes a term that, in the way the analysis is reported, becomes “what Asian women want”.
It’s a neat analysis, but the interpretation is written in a way that misrepresents what was actually done (apart from the last 2 charts, which, as I understand, provide absolute values).
Thanks, OKC!
Very interesting, got me thinking. Does this data reflect what people really think, or what they feel they “ought” to think in order to attract a partner? This is not to say that all singletons wilfully misdescribe themselves, but data collected over 500,000 people might reveal a bias towards race/gender stereotypes.
A different example: at a business networking meeting with strangers people often dress more smartly than usual to give a good first impression. At that initial meeting they lean more towards perceived stereotypes of what’s “normal” or “acceptable” in order to seem more approachable, then show more individuality later when it seems safer.
@Lly : Actually I disagree. What you call the “most difficult to comprehend” levels are the levels I find far easier to understand. The reason is precision. People who write on lower levels just don’t really express their ideas, so what they say/write could mean a lot, but because there is often a common understanding they understand each other. Oblivious to the fact, that what they say could be interpreted in thousands of ways.
Dr CHAR, it’s a legitimate reflection of ok Cupid users.
Where did they say this represented the whole country?
It’s not like black people like Van Halen. It’s not like it’s inaccurate.
Take it for what it is.
I am Jamaican and have very little in common with African American women. The data does not acknowledge the differences of people from other countries.
Asian women show off their practicality? I grew up around many Asian women and if by practical you mean ‘has draws full of make-up to plaster their faces with’ or overuse of lightening creams..etc, then this is accurate. From my observations, white women and black women wear the least amount of make-up… of course there are exceptions, though I do think most asian women literally ‘put on their face’ in the morning.
Looks like someone had fun poking at all ethnicities with questions that were of THEIR interest. It could be so easy to skew the facts that were found to suit the agenda of whatever the author was seeking. This was the Bell Curve of OkCupid. Its hard to say this was racist though. Makes you wonder why it was titled “The REAL Stuff White People Like”, and not titled with another race. That seems more of a preferance though.
I don’t think you can generalize any race or culture in a free pay site, there are just too many differencies of opinions. HAVE YOU READ SOME OF THESE PROFILES?
I don’t think everyone of each respective race falls in line with these results,,,not from the profiles I have read. People seem to be light-hearted, or hard core. Seems like there is no in between nowadays. To get to the truth, man, you gotta’ find that middle ground..
You could sell this to the radicals in the tea party and they will make something racist out of it though…lol
Is it me or do Asian people seem to kind of be more white than white people?
OMG ! Apparently I’m Asian. What are my parents going to say ? Last time I checked I was a white guy. That’s it, I’m dyeing my hair black, tinting up my skin and getting eye surgery to fix my Bambi’s into an inscrutable squint. I need to be with my people. Unlike most Asian guys I am actually good at martial arts though, I hope that isn’t a stereotyping doublethink “tell” that I wasn’t born Asian.
Just a minor note. But this is say “White American” really right? I mean who the hell are the Red Sox?
Those graphs are counterintuitive actually because it is a free site and it is probably saying that above those reading levels the people have not so much of a problem getting dates or can afford the paying sites.
Or people stronger in religion actually have an easier time at getting dates/married.
Or that aethiests are having a harder time than anyone else in the dating market as their smartest people have to go to a free dating site. he he he
So what always happens to the “Red” people? you know there are 4! colors. No white guys you didn’t kill them all off. Native Americans are alive and well. I guess US citizens want to keep us hidden and out of the worlds discussions because we are living examples of their thirst to own everything. What is happening in Iraq is just the second coming of the SAME! cavalierly. So take your Christian attitude that God only loves you and what you can’t buy you will take by force and stick it.
i have a hard time believing most of the stuff listed for black males and females on here. simply because after being on this site for about 2 years i notice that most of the blacks on okc me included have tastes and likes that stand outside of the “black societal norm”. now at the same time like another black person stated earlier this would fit for alot of blacks that we know. so i wonder if the black males and females that answered these questions answered by what the black norm would have answered.
it’s just a comical exploration people! good gawd, lighten up. do you really think it’s a profound investigation of the nature of humanity?!
christian, yer high-larious!
Interesting results: I’m “whiter” than I thought, but not as bad as some, and I might have a chance with a Pacific Islander!
Why did he divide Christians into 2 subgroups, and did not do so with the other religious faiths?
Statistics by skin color are a waste of time and keeps people dumber than dogs. Do you think a Black-coated Labrador Retriever finds it a big deal that another Lab is Brown-coated? Transcend the minutia, will you?
Statistics by blood type and geno type are far more interesting and educational. See Live Right for Your Type by Peter D’Adamo. Also See The GenoType Diet by Peter D’Adamo.
OKCupid also sets out a bucket for its members to enter their Western Astrology Tropical Sun Sign. It does not ask in which house or on what cusp is the Sun Sign. Statistics by Sun Sign are not as important as statistics by North Node with an indication of house or cusp.
Steefen, Author-Playwright
– Water Bearing Fish, Part I
– Insights on the Exodus, King David, and Jesus, The Greatest Bible Study in Historical Accuracy
Can your next study examine the correlation between atheists and smugness? I bet it’d be off the charts.
interesting article — i’d wondered if anyone ever sat down to perform content analysis on online dating profiles, because it seemed like a goldmine. good to see someone has =)
would it be possible in the future to include some description of the subject pool? e.g., what percentages of the total pool were white, black, asian, latino/a? compared to the total number of users of each “race” on okc, what percentages were selected in the sample (e.g., 10% of all black members)? average age of total pool, average age as separated by “race”, etc., etc., etc. while i’m not going after your current analysis method, it would be great to have some sense of representativeness =)
Uh, alright. I identified with the Asian stereotypes. Both masculine and feminine. This would be normal…. if I were Asian. But I’m both black and white. Maybe black + white =Asian? They really should have included a bi-racial section in this. Anyway, I love Korean and Thai food. And I’m pretty sure a lot of the words about that in my profile contributed to that.
As a super atheist, it made me proud to know we usually have a higher writing level. Call me pretentious or what have you, but it’s a refreshing notion.
What weird kind of coincidence makes “A Tribe Called Quest” high on both the black men’s and pacific island women’s list?
Jayemel, I can’t even hope to aspire to apathy.
I need to be less simple…and i need to watch the big lebowski. and oh the things i need…I need to convert to buddhism but not take it seriously, then I’m gonna be the smartest.
Seriously, I found this interesting. Please people, don’t take it too seriously!
Oh and @Steve von Maas, really cool comment about the possibility we are all making rather dishonest profiles and instead filtering our descriptions of ourselves with how we view positive stereotypes. Are we all just bending reality to make ourselves more attractive and unique to the opposite sex…and all doing it in far too similar ways?
Your sampling is only limited to this site which is its own demographic. This leads to a skew of what (insert ethnic background here) really likes. Its entertaining nonetheless.
Can’t FUCKING relate… just your typical unaverage white boy…Play that funky music. HAHA…Golf? Golf? WTF?
This is pretty interesting. Good read. 95% of what other women of my race like I don’t LOL
Now I am by profession an Epidemiologist….which means statistics, in my case of health related factors, is my holly grail. And, not even my obsessive compulsive ass is expecting this to be a peer review quality BLOG post. Kinda funny….if its acurate, its interesting that people annotate their race and then seem to Self-stereotype themselves so well.
By the way, Correlation and Linkage are scientific terms we should not use out of place.
Sweeping generalities? Sure.
True for every single person? Hell no.
But I does like me some Diet fucking Coke.
Funny thing about religion vs. writing… I’d suspected an inverse proportionality between religiosity and intellect. But why do the Jews and Buddhists have to screw with my hypothesis? I hate it when facts get in the way of what I want to believe…
Race is simply a construct of society. Biologically speaking, it doesn’t exist. Culture definitely does. But, I’m white, and I’m more genetically close to a man from zimbabwe than I am to another white American. Not that I have any issues with this post. I just think more people should know this and stop being so bigoted, because, in the end, we are all the same. Not culturally, perhaps, but genetically.
I really love how those people who dislike the results of studies put so much effort into then discrediting those studies. Typically suveys with populaitons totally 1000 of 10,000 are considered adequate within the sciences; with a population of 526,000 [THOUSAND] profiles in the statistical analysis, the error bars aren’t going to be that big – you’re looking at error between 2 and 5%!
Of course, if you don’t like the results of a survey, you can always turn up your nose and bury your head in the sand and scream “It’s just a stereotype! It’s just a stereotype!” No wonder this country is no longer number one in the world. Yeah, I said it. One part of personal growth is learning to use statistics to reflect on personal behavior, and then use that knowledge to make an informed decision on how to change yourself to make yourself better. You can’t have personal growth if you spend all your time in denial, screaming “it’s jsst a stereotype! It’s jsut a stereotype!” That’s the beginning of Ignorance!
Oh yeah…So if the text measures readability, it means I need a 9th grade reading level to understand an Atheist’s profile, and an 8th grade reading level to understand a christian’s profile? So then, would it not follow that the composition level of the Atheist’s post is at a 9th grade level, and the christian’s composition level is at an 8th grade level? Me thinks this revelation might be the difference between an 8th grade reading level and a 9th grade reading level! One can understand higher order logic [if it is written that A = B, then it is also infered that B = A] and the other can only understand logic in one way [if it is written that A =B, then A = B and THAT’S IT!]
Ohh boy, this OK Cupid Trends loves to stir the racial hornets nest LOL. Hmmm, interesting but not exactly shocking stereotypes come to light ,whte guys love rock music and motorsports, black males like soul food and basketball, and hispanic males like fighting… and spanish music Then predictably, the fringe members of these ethnicities/races come out of the woodwork crying foul… STEREOTYPES are like drunks and small children, they always tell the truth 99 percent of the time.
No wonder hispanic girls love white guys, hispanic men are hyper aggressive and want to fight all the time…while llstening to reggetone
Now I need to go, the NASCAR race is on and I need to put some Van Halen on in the garage
I live in a small Southwestern city. It is not my speed, and there is no there there, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein.
Now I see that white women here are mainly country girls at heart even if they live in Gotham. NASCAR? Country girl? Horseback riding? Country music? Quite sad if you enjoy the big city. Also the huge interest in the Red Sox to me suggests a lot of folks live in Boston!
Also it seems that Clairol is the continuing key to the good life, as I’m blond rates so highly.
On the bright side, they like the wonderful Nora Ephron and her When Harry Met Sally, a wonderful urban romance. This fandom for Ephron has to be due to Julie and Julia. I like Ms. Ephron so much I was gonna name a kid Nora, but I was outvoted. I guess not everyone likes her. I’m not a complete outlier as I like The Big Lebowski, Patricia Cornwell, Carrie Underwood and Alicia Keyes.
Well I was gonna say something, but afwildcat 4life pretty much said everything.
If you’re upset by the results then try to better yourself. If you’re a christian then read more. If you’re a black woman, maybe you should try foods from other cultures. If you’re a white male, maybe you can try putting the golf clubs away and stop being so goddamn white all the time (lol).
But then, I’m a multi-racial atheist. I don’t have a horse in this race. Or in any race for that matter.
Christian,
You need to do this for gay men and lesbian women (either combined, or analyzed by race.) I would also be interested in seeing breakdowns by age.
I think if you looked at younger, gay, white guys, you would see a much different result in your results. I look at a lot of gay white guys’ profiles and I have a lot in common with them, but zero words/likes/colloquialisms in common with the full set of white men you looked at.
I think in the younger subset you will see much more crossover of racial colloqualisms. Look at 18-30yo white gays’ profiles and you’ll see a lot of chillin, playstation, cool, laid-back, and so on, and near ZERO of the sailing, lebowski, and hunting words that your survey of whites has shown. I don’t know a single white gay guy in my friend group that likes such things and most of us would be way turned off!
– JC
I think the Stuff White People Like blogger would point out that those are the “wrong type of white people.”
fucking brilliant
Thanks for saying that white girls like the Red Sox, terrible movies, and a random European country, and that they apparently don’t know how to read. My demographic is oh so well represented. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go choke on a pint of Haagen Dasz and watch Sex and the City 2, and do my gender even prouder.
I challenge the people at OKCupid to delve into the “Sidenote: reading level” data and give us some hypotheses, instead of just putting it out there and smirking. “Gosh, we’re not going to speculate on this, it’s just verrrry interesting …” Come on.
Unfortunately, they’re never going to do that extra step of analysis, because it would show that there are a lot of complex, intertwined factors at work here and that would ruin the standard OKCupid “belief in higher power = stupid; belief in Jesus specifically = really stupid” message. For example: OKCupid’s own data show that black people are more likely to mention religion in their profiles. Black people also are historically disadvantaged when it comes to education in this country. So it follows that when they grow up, on average, they are probably not sprinkling as many 10-dollar words through their OKCupid profiles as their white peers who, on average, received better education. Well, that just skewed the data toward religious people being less “intelligent,” didn’t it? (Oh, I know they called it “writing proficiency level,” but the subtext was clear.) I could give other examples, but my point is that a lot of this comes down to socioeconomic issues and education, not religion and intelligence. Too bad it’s so much easier to stop analyzing the data when you’ve got an answer that confirms your bias than it is to talk about the tough issues of race and class in this country.
I love how the entire world bastardized white people. I bet you a million dollars this was not written by a Caucasian. What a load of horse shit racist propaganda.
i’m sure there’s a lot of educated things one could contribute to this conversation, but since it hasn’t been said, and desperately needs to be: tom clancy sucks.
‘Tis a sad, sad day for OkCupid indeed. To lump so many varying cultures under labels such as white, black, asian, latino, and the like. Hardly the caliber of quality that is expected to pass the rigorous protocols of the OkCupid Metrics Police.
Lmfao I loved reading this!
Cool story, bro.
So, do they mean culinary soul food, Soul Food, the movie and TV series, or both?
Only a white chick would pose for a picture with a stupid expression on her face, pointing to a beer can, with unflattering eyeglasses and a short sleeve shirt over a long sleeved one.
YOU JUST WON’T SEE ANYONE ELSE DOING THAT.
@afwildcat 4life That’s 100% what I thought. This study is great. It simply shows reality and people find their way to ignore it.
afwildcat 4life if you liked it good for you…To be honest I don’t give a f what you think. Now what I don’t get is why you so concern or why you are getting so FRUSTRATED about what ppl that you don’t even know or care, think. Go to another place with your explanation…