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,

This isn’t actually a study of what different races like, is it? It’s a study of what different social groupings within the USA like.
The group ‘Asian’ is way too large to have any real commonality. Your definition of ‘Asian’ seems to mean Far Eastern, but the term also includes India, Pakistan, Russia, the Middle East, and hundreds more. Making any generalisation about what ‘Asians’ like is just ridiculous.
Not sure how much faith I put in the use of the Coleman-Liau Index for the reading level of the profiles. I used on online calculator on my profile it it says that the Coleman-Liau index is 6.47 but the Gunning Fog index is 13.67 so take the numbers with a grain of salt. Also, this is a dating site so just because some is using “simple language” in their profile doesn’t mean that they aren’t intelligent.
How did you choose phrase boundaries? For instance, “I’m a simple girl” is not marked within the source text as an atomic phrase, but you must have chosen it as a text unit in order to count it.
I’ve traveled a lot and noticed similar findings during my travels – the more poor and non-educated a place, the more religious it gets. You can see this easily if you travel from the south to the north of Brazil – the south is relatively rich and prosperous and non-religious whereas slowly as you move up things get poorer and more messed up and churches start popping up everywhere.
People should understand this is statistics, theres no emotional or biased judgment. Its not stereotyping because its not taking any person’s previous or preconceived thoughts to influence the outcome, make a decision or form an opinion . Its taking information from what people put down themselves and presenting it in an organized format. Being that it is STATISTICS not everyone who is black, white, asian, latino will fit into the categories of what black, white, asian, latinos like. Its only saying that given a set of criteria, in this case race and religion if you happened to ask someone from a given group what they like and enjoy, this is what you would hear.
If weather man saying theres an 80% chance of it will rain – hes telling you this because based on the atmospheric conditions at hand it has rained 80% of previous times in which there were similar conditions. Now will it definitely rain….no, but would you bring and umbrella, yes.
What abiout native americans?
Hi, what method did you use for extracting the data and subsequent analysis. Just frequency? Any weights used?
@AC: did you even read the article you linked to? It not only cites other sources that atheists score higher, but it also states that its (tiny) sample of atheists comprised those who attended church several times a year… hardly, as the article correctly states, a representative sample of atheists. I suspect OKCupid’s sample is, if anything, more representative.
There are a lot of uneducated bible thumping idiots out there. Just saying. Funny thing, when I was a cop, all the other cops were bible thumpers. And they couldn’t write reports worth a crap..or spell. I guess this explains it. Thank you for the most informative report that I can sit here with my atheism and my MBA and feel high and mighty over my “sheep”.
Anybody old enough to be wearing long pants, who has lived and worked outside of the academic cocoon already knows all they need to about stereotypes. Only people whose nose is buried in their cell phone or computer would not be aware of the traits common to cultures and races. Travel. Not as a tourist. Work in some foreign lands. Then speak.
“Empty vessels make the most noise”
I thought it was interesting. But then, none of my stuff would get listed, since I haven’t put down that I’m white. I wonder what you’d get from the people who didn’t list a colour.
I’m a white male. I like exactly one thing in the list attributed to white males. I don’t even recognize a third of them.
That means there are other categories of white males not reflected in your data.
Every word.
Hey What4… what it also means is you might be a lonely homo!
“I used on online calculator on my profile it it says that the Coleman-Liau index is 6.47 but the Gunning Fog index is 13.67 so take the numbers with a grain of salt. Also, this is a dating site so just because some is using “simple language” in their profile doesn’t mean that they aren’t intelligent.”
point well made
Sashimi? plenty of white folk eat that, they just don’t call it that.
Rollmops, salmon, caviare (ish) etc…
@AC
Your study about IQ with regard to religion only covers people who go to church several times a year. So, you might say that “Atheists who go to church aren’t that bright”. But, that cannot be extrapolated to atheists, in general.
Thanks Christian, probably OKC’s most insightful blog post so far.
What would really interest me is to see the results for those who do NOT declare a race, such as myself.
I do this for three reasons:
1) because I think it is irrelevant for the purposes of my presence on OKC, i.e dating. My race is important for my doctor perhaps, but for most for my social activity, my physiology really shouldn’t influence people’s perception of me. By stating your race, you invite stereotypes. Most people want this, it’s a sort of easy short hand – I don’t. I do refer to an ambiguous national identity in my profile just to satiate the curious, but it’s not definitive.
2) I’m in the UK, so our racial ‘labels’ are different to yours in the US – in the UK an Asian is someone from the South Asian sub-continent (me) but I’m not from India, so it would anyway be inaccurate to use either of those labels.
3) I deliberately want to deter people from being able to search for me by race. I don’t fancy being a fetish for non Asians who search for Asians and as for Asian men who only search for Asian women, well, if you’ve ever received messages from middle aged South Asian guys who want to ‘know you’ you’ll understand why I don’t want that stuff filling up my inbox. I already get these though I deliberately don’t promote my race, imagine if I did!
Anyway, those are just some examples of the way I think about and analyse relationships – do you think there may be some shared values and perceptions with others who do not state their race? Surely there’s a big enough sample to do this?
By the way, I do not identify with any of the groups by race or gender in your post – it is actually quite shocking to see people compartmentalised so easily (on such a huge sample too) – in fact it’s almost shocking enough to put me off OKC…people here are the least conventional from all the dating sites, and still we get such predictable groupings.
Cosmic
religious people less intelligent? no wai.
I’d be interested to see this data adjusted for education and/or income, especially for the “white” category. I suspect that if you made a separate category for “white, with bachelor’s degree or above,” for example, you’d get pretty different results.
Perhaps the responses are goofy because they took them from a dating website…perhaps there’s a REASON these people are single…and PERHAPS that reason (those reasons) are listed in their profiles. Thank you. I’ll be here all week.
This is pure data collected from about 500,000 “OkCupid” users. No one should assume that all people are like this, and should only judge someone when they get to know them mostly. To assume that most, or even all OKCupid users are like this, and real people in the world are like this, is wrong.
This may only indicate a few to some (still not much) at most to be actually exactly like this, as these are generalities based on data/statistics, even if it turns out to be partially true, as interesting as they are, keep them as that, interesting/entertaining.
(Profiles that are accurate, honest and detailed may indicate at best give something of an impression at best of the what the person is like.
But without messaging at the least, calling, and ideally meeting up in person (somewhere public and safe, people), you can’t really get to know someone as well.
Questions answered may indicate where you are compatible when it comes to important things to you and them. I’m not sure about actual personality traits or even match scores.
(I get quiver matches with people that are mostly incompatible, when I check out their *full* details that are available. One seemed quiver match seemed decent, and I messaged him, but he never wrote back. One person’s profile I found interesting, and appeared to have good character on impression, and somewhat compatible I messaged, and is actually having regular replies back and forth with, so I’m happy about at least that.)
To let everyone know, I am a gay white man, with some issues/quirks, but am a good person overall, and I wish all good people in this world well.
To those over-judgmental, bigoted, brainwashed/influenced by peers and/or family, or those with selfish and/or sinister intent. Either start educating yourself more, and/or seek a reliable expert psychologist (Because you may need help on more than just this, though this is a *very* important issue as well.), don’t even seek good deserving friends online until either your personality has matured, your overall character has improved, or if you did decide on the psychologist, that you are considered cured and/or much better from your problems that you’re dealing with. Don’t ever act based on your hatred, selfish interests, or misinformed information/personal beliefs.
Keep your personal beliefs, if they are indeed full of hate and/or misinformation to yourself for now, and stop associating with bad influences. Never act on them in any way, and good people may begin to trust you again, and your overall reputation will improve, online and in the real world. Seek real knowledge, and probably a good , expert psychologist to work out any personal issues.
All those with good intentions and good character on this site (and in this world), I wish you to find good friends and good dates/lovers/etc., and just generally good and cool people to at least chat with online, or just over messaging.
Be sure to plan ahead, and use safe sex (condoms, or other safe practices if you have no access to them for some reason) until you’re both tested if you ever plan on dating/meeting someone you’re interested in, no matter what. (Even if you plan on waiting for marriage or some kind of other plans you have, be sure and get tested anyways, and keep some condoms with you, just in case things get too heated with someone special to you, just in case you’re not ready for children and/or haven’t both been tested yet!)
And get to know someone well enough to trust them before meeting somewhere alone/private (Like their residence).
A tip on communication: In person>Phone>Internet.
It is easiest to communicate intent, feelings, and generally important and casual things, mostly in person. And it is easiest to observe reactions by facial, body movement, their general mood, and reactions to things said.
And if you’re (very) observant enough, possibly their current intent/character.
I find the opening photos of this okc trend link of two women vs. women is kind of offensive. Yesterday it was one of a pretty asian girl holding wine, vs a goofy white girl holding beer, and today it was one with another attractive asian girl, vs the goofy white girl. Why these photos?
What is OKC trying to say? Are they perpetuating certain stereotypes by putting up these two female images? Objectifying Asian women is too common, and making white girls look nerdy is also not cool…why are there not any opening images of men vs men? is OKC a parade of female flesh for the consumption of a male audience? A sleazy way to get our attention, okc admin.
I would like to see a break-down between black Protestants and white Protestants, etc.
Nothing from any other religious groups? We may be in the minority, but I find it hard to believe that not even a few of them cropped up in the sampling. Were they disregarded, or merely lumped in with agnostics or some other grouping?
Ugh. No one can ever talk about statistics without someone saying, “THAT CAN’T BE TRUE BECAUSE I’M [X] AND I DON’T REFLECT THE DATA.”
The data doesn’t care what you like. The data is just data and it says what it says. You can spin it any way you want to, but you can still whittle it down to objective facts.
I’m “white” and I don’t like Van Halen. What does that mean? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
And while we’re on the subject of race, it should be said that these arbitrary lines in the sand that we call “race” don’t mean a whole lot. The fact that two people from different cultures can’t agree on what “races” are present in their society should say something. Its your genetics that count, not your body’s response to UV exposure.
That being said, this was a fun little article. However, as per usual, the only thing that ruined it for me was the comments.
This doesn’t mean religious people are smarter, just that they write in such a way to score higher on this grade-level test…that is, they write fancily. To me that sounds more an indicator of elitism than intelligence.
@chrysler5thavenue – Early morning typo, that should have been “someone is.” Everyone makes mistakes from time to time.
For the religion/writing break down, it seems like the obvious conclusion is not that “Christians can’t write/are stupid,” but rather than educated Christians choose not to include their faith on their profiles, whereas educated members of other faiths and atheists do. Jumping to the conclusion that because not many of the well-written profiles proclaim a Christian faith could just as much be a reflection of the aggressive atheist mentality that labels Christians as less-intelligent…like they are being here…As a Christian grad of an Ivy League school, I don’t post my faith on profiles, precisely because I feel I am unfairly judged based on the loud-mouthed and perhaps less intelligent contingent of my religion. There are certainly uneducated Christians. There are also uneducated atheists. That the educated Christians do not post their beliefs on their profiles doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Bud fucking weiser
Fire fucking chicken
and best of all
Chuck fucking Norris…. Hahahahahaha to that fucking guy who mentioned hit. Brilliant!!!
One thing I’d like to point out with respect to the trend of writing proficiency versus religion:
First, I assume the users of OKC are mostly located in the U.S. If that’s true, then I would contend that muslims, hindus, and buddhists are represented in this data to a much, much higher level by people who are recent transplants (temporarily or permanently) to this country. These people (or perhaps their parents) had the means and motivation to get themselves to the U.S., something which is not at all trivial. In other words, many of them are among the best and brightest from their respective countries of origin. Therefore, it’s not at all surprising to me that they score considerably higher than the catholic or protestant users, who as a whole are much more representative of the “average Joe” from the U.S.
@Michael Lowry
I find it really entertaining that you are categorizing religious people as less critically-minded, when these statistics 1) are based on a dating profile, not a thesis paper, and 2) show that Jews (arguably far more doctrinal than Protestants) are only a 10th of a grade behind atheists (and devout buddhists are ahead of them). What exactly is the difference between a 10th of the 9th grade? And the entire scale covers just slightly over 1 grade level.
There is potentially some interesting info to be gathered here. Like perhaps the fact that more educated Christians feel uncomfortable mentioning their religion, or might be more open to other views and therefore have no need to list their own on their dating profile…but drawing grandiose conclusions about the critical thinking skills of all religious people based on a relatively narrow difference in writing level on their dating profiles seems ridiculous.
Great post!!
Can you share the racial make-up of OKC’s online community. What is the geographical distribution of the profiles you chose? Religion, income and reading level together can be tied to geographic region. i.e. Protestants in the southeast / appalachians vs. protestants in the northwest.
I am a white female and I can’t identify with “my” list. I identify more with the Asian female than anything else. So its clear to me this list was made up from judgment and not fact.
Could you include a measure of the significance for the religion & race vs. reading score graphs? For example, Muslim (~grade 8.4) vs. atheist (~grade 8.9).. .is this significant? Maybe show these scores relative to the US population as a whole for perspective?
Wouldn’t it be more prudent to state that the findings are not what people like, but rather what they think they should like and believe it is expected that they like? It’s a dating site – it’s remarkably difficult to find anyone who matches up with the profile they’ve set up; in general, we are looking for a date or a mate, trying to make oneself more attractive and appeal to what one believe the people they are into want of them.
I feel it would be dreadfully, refreshingly rare for someone to not be influenced by that idea – thus I think you’re stating the outcomes incorrectly.
For instance, look how prominent ‘The Red Sox’ are for all white women – while this is a pretty savage indictment of the dating scene in MA, it’s also a major ‘LOOK AT HOW NORMAL I AM, I LIKE RED SOX AND GOING TO BARS AND MY FRIENDS AND LOL’ – where some cultures would say ‘i’m a simple guy’ – there might be a series of ‘likes’ that are just code for ‘hamg, im normal just ask me out, it’s safe!’
Very sad, though, if it’s on point – one of those previous stat lists showed most white men will only date white women – and since most white men apparently like metal and most white women apparently like The Red Sox…
Any data on multi-racial people?
Hello. The smart white protestants are married. Durrrrrrrrrrr.
“I hope they server beer in hell”? Server?!
Something to note is that people who are “very serious” about being non-religious tend to be very non-fun people. I doubt the vast majority of people who create OKCupid profiles are considering it to be a masterpiece of writing; many of them want to appear to be laid back, funny, etc. Thus a phrase is born that people should keep in mind: “correlation does not equal causation”
Please provide the sample size for each ‘racial’ group. How many people were throw out for being mixed race, other, etc.? I’d generally like to know more about the sample and sampling method. Also, I’m sure adjusting for age would give vastly different results; IE. white males 18-24,25-30,31-35, etc…
Also, using word size can be a highly inaccurate representation of the data, you are using a two dimensional representation of a one dimensional variable; this is not a honest way to depict frequency since longer phrases will read larger to the eye and carry more weight, if you use a two-dimensional object their AREAs need to be comparable in ratio to the frequency distribution. YOU SHOULD HAVE USED A HISTOGRAM (or relative frequency histogram), like an honest statistician.
I really want your database. Are you going to make the data publicly available?
You know it took me until the second read-through to see that you were only listing words that different races liked that other races didn’t. You should make it clearer, because you aren’t showing “what black people like” or “what asian people like”, you’re just showing the things they like that are different to everyone else. I want to see what it looks like if you take into account their actual interests as opposed to just the racial outliers- I bet everyone looks very similar.
The replies indicate this data is pretty accurate.
I have analysed the replies and find the objections fall on a normal curve that lends validity to the data.
I don’t golf, bowl, and I didn’t love the Big Lebowski and don’t feel I am the average white male Joe, but I do feel the characteristics described do paint an accurate picture of the guys and gals of all races on dating sites.
BTW, the fattest segment of society are black women (50% obesity rate) and the most fatty diet is soul food.
QED
The replies indicate this data is pretty accurate.
I have analysed the replies and find the objections fall on a normal curve that lends validity to the data.
I don’t golf, bowl, and I didn’t love the Big Lebowski but do feel and don’t feel I am the average white male Joe, but I do feel the characterisitics described do paint an accurate picture of the guys and gals of all races on dating sites.
BTW, the fattest segment of society are black women (50% obesity rate) and the most fatty diet is soul food.
QED
I hesitated when clicking the link because I thought it was going to be only about white people. Glad to see that other races are discussed. Really interesting and funny.
I think that people need to take it with a grain of salt. Its anecdotal and not representative. We need to be able to talk about race w/o getting upset all the time.
@xx: Yeah, actually. It’s because we atheists have the logical reasoning skills to deduce the nonexistence of a higher power. Also, several religions scored pretty high, just Christianity scored low so you got upset.
I want to delve deeper into the cult-like appeal of the Red Sox to white chicks. Seriously, seems like every white girl I know who’s ever sniffed Boston air is then ready to spill Yankee blood.
My guess is the reading level data is not applicable to the general population. Don’t forget the filter for these stats:
Single Americans who use the internet to find dates.
This filter may deliver a different cross-section from one race or religion vs another. For example, intelligent Jews may be more likely to use the internet to find other Jews, since Jewishness tends to be critical criteria in a mate for the race.
Congratulations. I enjoy OkTrends articles very much because of you innovative ways of presenting data, and yes, I also enjoy the occasional foolish commentary. Looking forward to the next one. Cheers!