Your Race Affects Whether People Write You Back

October 5th, 2009 by christian

Welcome back, dorks. We’ve processed the messaging habits of almost a million people and are about to basically prove that, despite what you might’ve heard from the Obama campaign and organic cereal commercials, racism is alive and well. It would be awesome if the other major online dating players would go out on a limb and release their own race data, too. I can’t imagine they will: multi-million dollar enterprises rarely like to admit that the people paying them those millions act like turds. But being poor gives us a certain freedom. To alienate all our users. So there.

When I first started looking at first-contact attempts and who was writing who back, it was immediately obvious that the sender’s race was a huge factor. Here are just a handful of the numbers that illustrate that:

The takeaway here is that although race shouldn’t matter in messaging, it does. A lot.

More Compatibility Means More Replies (Normally)

First of all, how do we know that race shouldn’t matter? Are we just making some after-school-special assumption that “true love is colorblind?” No, we’re not: we know race shouldn’t matter to replies because the races all match each other more or less evenly, and reply rate correlates to matching.

On OkCupid you create your own unique matching system, and that means your better matches are people you actually want talk to. Below is a graph showing match percentages vs. reply rates for a random sample of 500,000 people. As you can see, in general, the better you match someone, the more likely you are to reply to a first message from them.

We can see this principle in action when we look at our trusty control, the Zodiac. Here are the match and reply rates side-by-side, with similar rates colored yellow. There’s no real need to inspect the numbers; just observe the similar colors.

  • Throughout this post, yellowish colors are short-hand for “neutral” and red and green indicate “strong preference.”

People of the various Zodiac signs match each other all at roughly the average rate, and, as we would expect, they reply to messages similarly. In general, the correlation between match percentage and reply rate means that whenever we compare the match/reply charts for a given breakdown of the population, they should look about the same. However, this, like so many other fine assumptions, totally breaks down when race gets involved:

Again, don’t bother squinting, just check out the colors. We’ll now look very closely at these tables.

The Race Is On

So here’s last week’s compatibility by race table (I explained how we can confidently measure “compatibility” in that post). This is a blow-up of the leftmost table above:

Now let’s look at the vastly different table of actual reply rates for messages, sent by men to women (I know our gay readers are interested in same-sex versions of these tables, and I will produce them next week):

The numbers on the perimeter of the table are the weighted average rates for each column/row. Here’s what we know:

  • Black women are sweethearts. Or just talkative. But either way, they are by far the most likely to reply to your first message. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and overall black women reply about a quarter more often.
  • White men get more responses. Whatever it is, white males just get more replies from almost every group. We were careful to preselect our data pool so that physical attractiveness (as measured by our site picture-rating utility) was roughly even across all the race/gender slices. For guys, we did likewise with height.
  • White women prefer white men to the exclusion of everyone else—and Asian and Hispanic women prefer them even more exclusively. These three types of women only respond well to white men. More significantly, these groups’ reply rates to non-whites is terrible. Asian women write back non-white males at 21.9%, Hispanic women at 22.9%, and white women at 23.0%. It’s here where things get interesting, for white women in particular. If you look at the match-by-race table before this one, the “should-look-like” one, you see that white women have an above-average compatibility with almost every group. Yet they only reply well to guys who look like them. There’s more data on this towards the end of the post.

Let’s see what happens when it’s the women writing the messages to men.

  • Men don’t write black women back. Or rather, they write them back far less often than they should. Black women reply the most, yet get by far the fewest replies. Essentially every race—including other blacks—singles them out for the cold shoulder.
  • White guys are shitty, but fairly even-handed about it. The average reply rate of non-white males is 48.1%, while white guys’ is only 40.5%. Basically, they write back about 20% less often. It’s ironic that white guys are worst responders, because as we saw above they get the most replies. That has apparently made them very self-absorbed. It’s interesting that white males do manage to reply to Middle Eastern women. Is there some kind of emergent fetish there? As Middle Easterners are becoming America’s next racial bogeyman, maybe there’s some kind of forbidden fruit thing going on. (Perhaps a reader more up-to-date on his or her Post-Colonial Theory can step in here? Just kidding. Don’t.)

A Last Couple Graphs

These are site-wide answers to a couple user-written match questions. They barely need any explanation: one comments on the other, really. Together they shed more light on the theory/practice schizophrenia of people’s racial attitudes.


It’s Probably Not Just OkCupid That’s Like This

I don’t want anyone walking away from all this thinking that OkCupid users exceptionally horrible mofos. It’s likely that any dating site (and indeed any collection of people) would exhibit messaging biases similar to what I’ve written up. According to our internal metrics, at least, OkCupid’s users are better-educated, younger, and far more progressive than the norm, so I can imagine that many sites would actually have worse race stats. But like I said at the beginning, we’ll probably never know. See you next week.

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314 Responses to “Your Race Affects Whether People Write You Back”

  1. These statistics show that we should have a race war!

  2. Yeah, I’m not really surprised. But I will admit there are lots of factors in picking someone to date.

    I have also said all along that it would be good to have the option of only showing people who are open to interracial dating.

    I also think it would be nice to see a study done on geography. I live in the 4th largest city in the US, and I must say that there are plenty of people that are open for it. I wonder how it looks in more rural areas.

    And yes there is racism on OKC. Just check out some of the profiles, and the forums. Lol, oh my god just check out the forums. Even if it’s for the laughs. The people in there are pretty horrible and ignorant. I hope they don’t represent most people on this site.

  3. JackieJormpJomp

    When we colonize other planets we can have a planet for the chinese, a planet for the french, etc.

  4. hedonistinva

    I find it interesting that response rates are so low…

    I don’t think I have ever NOT responded to a first email on here… Even if I wasn’t interested. The only time I wouldn’t do so if it were obvious spam! Which I don’t get here… Much of the reason I like this site.

  5. periapt

    @Seedypoet

    Did i say I’m revolted by non-whites? Maybe I dont like dark skin. Maybe I dont even give tan white girls a chance. Maybe I’m not interested in relationships, only in sex, and so i’m looking only at girls who fit my ‘ideal’ physical blah blah blah. If you have a problem with my sexual preferences based purely on looks then you can go jump. I said ‘based on looks’, so why has it been assumed that I hate others just cos they arent white?

  6. “I want my grandchildren to look like my grandparents. I don’t want them to look like Anwar Sadat or Foo Man Chu or Whoopi Goldberg.” – Jared Taylor, American Renaissance
    http://amren.com/

    I agree with Jared Taylor. My ancestors have been white for 40,000 years, and I’d like my children be white. If you want to call me a “racist,” go ahead. You’re not going to guilt me into changing my personal preferences.

  7. Chris

    wow, white people are racist.

    what a surprise….

  8. NeodymiumMagnet

    I think of this article is being a bit too hasty in claiming racism. Preferences are preferences and I’ve found that they are strongly influenced by one’s upbringing and the surrounding environment. You can’t force someone who doesn’t happen to be attracted to members of another race to be attracted to them.

    Although at the same time, it’d be silly to discount every single member of a given race, as you haven’t met everyone. Thus, it could be said that the whole interracial marriage stats do display a degree of racial discrimination. Even then, only 6-7% of the population won’t respond because of one’s race. That still leaves over 90% of us to not respond for entirely different reasons.

    Anyway, yes. Racism still exists and we all still poop, fart, and burp.

  9. agentq271

    I find it quite interesting that white people in general are much more likely to respond yes to the questions on interracial marriage and strong racial preferences in their mate. I personally find these statistics frightening, but there is also huge bias in the data in that the nearly 2/3 of all the respondents are white, so I would not doubt that people of other races are equally as likely to be just as racist, they are just much less likely to be active users on this site.

    I think it would also be interesting to break down the racism by geographic location if possible. That is does the data show that people are more likely to be racist in one country versus another, or certain US states versus others.

  10. JanneF

    So white people are racist. Well, you can take the results that way and rub it in peoples face. Lets twist the numbers and build more stereotypes…. how about we single out middle eastern and indan males: let’s see if these stats can be interpredet so that we can make them look bad.

    Middle-Eastern males are more desparate than others, clearly because their respond rate to female sender is 7.7% higher than your average male. Idian males are just as bad. While dissing indians males, they are racist if anybody is: their response rates among races have the highest deviation, plus they seem to be revolting generally across the board.

    So basicly, if you know who’s quilty, finding the crime is only matter of time.

  11. Coyote

    Jonathan – Your comment shows you should just not bother opening your mouth.

  12. Eric

    This post made me want to work for you guys. Thanks for having the sack/ovaries to publish this.

    …And to visualize it so nicely.

  13. I’d say it’s not so much racism as aesthetic preference. I will be the first to say that race is just skin deep. The thing is that it IS skin deep, and people evaluate potential romantic partners on the basis of appearance. Is it really racism to prefer lighter skin or darker skin in a partner? It’s just like preferring shorter or more athletic or redheaded partners.

    On another note, this explains my extremely dismal love life. I am a hispanic male, and I am mainly attracted to white and asian women.

  14. moreanimals

    there’s a big gap between racial preference and systemic racism… and i’d say these results are indicative of both. that the response to having an interracial relationship is so different for whites and nonwhites really highlights the normative notion that whiteness is always accepted whereas nonwhiteness is not.

    also, to all the white people who love to talk about how “race doesn’t matter” and that people “should stop talking about race”, the fact that race is a social construction does not mean it ceases to be a social reality. all the best-intentioned people in the world, no matter how much they do not want to racist, implicitly support racism by denying the experiences of people of color. if you doubt this, i’d suggest looking at the disproportionate sentencing that is applied to people of color by the institution which we are taught to believe is “colorblind”: and if the legal system fosters this inequity, imagine what civil society can do!

  15. blurrystars

    wow thank you for publishing this, very sad, very interesting, and very bold of you as a website

  16. xxx

    “White” is meaningless, Nordic, Italian and Spanish are completely different.

    “Indian” is meaningless too, aryan (60% of india’s pop) and dravidian (40% of india’s pop) are completely different. Note, the largest single Indo-European population is in India.

    Semites (Arabs, Jews) can look white but are
    entirely different than Europeans.

    And so on and on…

    Essentially your results are statistically meaningless, because you categories are too broad and meaningles and there is more variation within a category than between certain categories.

  17. Nivek

    The messages I have received from black female senders were roughly 10 words on average. Is the Expected Reply % including your previous calculations on initial message length, because that’s an important consideration.

    Maybe throw up a graph of average initial message length by race/gender too, that could be interesting.

  18. R

    What most impacted me from these results is the self deception involved. Pretty much everyone says “I’m OK with all races” and then goes and prefers whites anyway.

    This makes me think of another question: Left wingers (like me) like to say we’re more accepting and tolerant. Since you probably have the data to slice by political preference, or some reasonably accurate proxy, how about checking just how much that’s actually true?

    Also, it would be interesting to check by age? Are we improving at all?

  19. anon

    so glad to see these stats. u go okcupid for having the balls to tell it like it is and call it out. we all need to work on our shit.

    xo

  20. Naeryn

    I must wonder about physical attraction. What if a black woman messages a white man, and he doesn’t respond – simply because he doesn’t find her physically attractive? Granted, that may be related to race, but that doesn’t make someone racist. I myself typically find black women unattractive, largely because one of the major things that I am attracted to is very pale skin. I don’t even particularly like overly tanned white folks. This does NOT mean that I’m making a judgement call on that person’s personality, values, contributions to society, or anything else, based on race.

    And, whether we all like to admit it or not, physical attraction really is important in a relationship. Am I – or is anyone else – to be judged, simply for not being attracted to people of other races, as a general rule?

  21. ThisGuy1979

    this sucks, I love all the ladies, I’m just looking for one to put up with my sorry ass. black, white, blue, green, I don’t care what fkn color you are as long as you can put up with me!!!! WTF

  22. btw, the statistician in me wants to know how large your sample size is for each subgroup. Like the popularity of Middle Eastern women is both striking and TOTALLY counterintuitive, unless your sample size for them is just a few thousand messages. Then you’d have a big margin of error to explain it.

    Although to tell you the truth, I’m a pretty quick reply if someone seems good and nice and all, but there’s a message from a girl who self-identifies as “Middle Eastern” which is collectiing dust. Why? Because I’m intimidated. So maybe there’s something to this.

  23. Wondering Wanderer

    I wonder how many of the ladies who demand ‘perfect English’ know a second language to perfection.There are people with such talent – but it is not easy. But then, I live far enough not to be bothered by it, just curious.

  24. whorestar

    the black sisters aren’t getting any love. and why not? are their male counterparts busy screwing anything that moves?

  25. Wergoheb

    ^
    Yes, Probably that.

  26. Tiffany

    I’m not sure if i would call these results racist or not. A lot of people are wondering about things like how height, age, weight, grammar, and job status affect these sort of results. It looks like OKC has done a good job to screen these factors out so that their results are based solely on race, but I wanted to weigh in personnally. As a white woman I don’t think that I reply more often to white men than other races; I try to reply to everyone who messages me as long as they are initially polite, even if it’s just to let them know I’m not interested. But the men that I usually carry on long conversations with and end up dating tend to be taller, more educated, in at least average, if not good shape, well employed, well spoken, and yes, white. I would be just as happy to find an attractive man who met all of the former requirements without being white, but it doesn’t usually happen. The majority of men I am well matched with are either white or Asian, with a smattering of Hispanic, and a very small handful of other races. But the Asians are usually shorter than 5′9″, and in my experience anyone under 6′0″ adds at least two inches. I’m 5′8″, and I prefer dating men around whom I can wear 3″ heels without either of us feeling self conscious. The other factor that excludes a lot of non-white men for me is religion, and as anyone who read the results on religion and reply-rates knows, us Protestant women don’t like to reply to anyone. I sympathise with the other women on here who mentioned that many minority men do not present themselves in the most favorable light, through the use of net-speak and overly-suggestive language. And for the Indian men out there, I sympathise with you as well. Personally, I find many Middle-eastern and Indian features attractive, but again, for me it usually comes down to religion and culture. I think less of us are as racist as these statistics paint. But I also know that I would have a hard time relating to in-laws whose culture was completely foreign to me, or whose first language was not English. So, maybe I’m a little bit racist. At least I admit it and wish I weren’t.

  27. Thomas Jackson

    My review of this data does not invoke a scream of racism or TURD name calling.

    I simply ACCEPT the results, that being, we are all genetically programmed for certain preferences.

    Race matters because our “designer” programmed us to be that way. You can believe what you want about who the designer is. However, the designer’s fingerprints cannot be swept away by politcal correctness.

    Get past your public school/university brain-washing, accept your genetic programming ,then do the best you can with what you have to work with!

  28. Ohh wow best study ever, however the only suprising fact is the white-male muslimgirl fetish(wich i bet is simply the same factor as why some whitegirls are facinated by maasai-culture, supertraditionalgenderroles combined with kinkypornthoughts), wich i wont comment much except to say that i have noticed it aswell in the real world out there, this simply made me indulge more in the phenomena myself.
    Well OKC is fun cause its just so USA biased so you can really see it all so clearly.
    I love you all
    Luckely some of us have evolved

  29. kb1982

    Racism exists anywhere. It goes all ways, and it exists both in positive and negative situations. The only way for racism to NOT exist is for there to be no differentiation based on race, even for things such as affirmative action.

    That said, I’m not surprised that response rates are race-driven, nor am I surprised about the responses to race-related questions. A lot of people aren’t so much racist as they are shallow. As such, if a particular race generally isn’t attractive to him or her, then he or she is going to classify that person as ugly and move along.

    I’m completely open on dating someone of another race, but going further than that is honestly something that I’m not sure is a good idea. My family is pretty racist. I have no problem with what they’d think of me for dating/marrying a black woman, but I wouldn’t want the woman to be in that situation. Any relationship that she could ever possibly have with my family would be a two-faced one in which my family treated her well in her presence and like complete trash in her absence. I’m a honest person, so I’d really have trouble being part of a lie like that.

  30. Zak Zennii

    Have you gutsy folks compiled the same-sex data for this?
    May we see it?

  31. Mike Caprio

    @Chris – reread the post! White people as a group are not racist; white women prefer white men, and white men shun everyone except Middle Eastern women. I guess if you want to say anything, it’s that white women are race exclusive!

  32. Mike Caprio

    What’s really significant about this study is that it runs contrary to the one recently popularized in the media that said that Asian men fared worst amongst all races of women; e.g. women never prefer Asian men. The female replying to male rates clearly show though that black and Indian men fare at least as badly, and slightly worse.

  33. Jason

    It would be interesting to map the answers to “Would you strongly prefer to date someone of your own group” by zip code. The assumption is that people in big cities are more tolerant… I’m wondering if that’s true.

    Also interesting is the notion of separating the answers by self-identified political leanings.

    I don’t know if enough users identify their income level, but a similar examination of how income level affects reply rates would be neat. I predict people tending to reply to people in similar income brackets to their own… I know that I would be a bit intimidated by someone who made twice what I make.

    Finally… what “Site picture-rating utility” is Chris talking about?

  34. Jef

    Sexual incompatibility does not indicate racism…

    I think the words you use here commit many logical fallacies.

    All I have seen this prove is that white female prefer non-interracial relationships more than anyone else. Nothing more.

  35. Alex (w.m.)

    To people who called white people racists based on this data:
    This year I promise to get with more ethnic women to even things out a bit. After all who likes to be called racist based on your sexual preferences?

    P.S. I hope nobody calls me a homophobe, I’d feel a bit awkward trying to bring that statistics in line.

  36. Spencer

    “This post made me want to work for you guys. Thanks for having the sack/ovaries to publish this.

    …And to visualize it so nicely.”
    -Eric

    Yeah, I agree. Regardless of what this says about race relations it sure says a lot about the size of your guys’ huevos.

  37. If only we wouldnt let our historical pasts fog the vision for the future.

  38. Brian Chin

    That is extremely interesting. The data contradicts much of what I heard in college about interracial dating, but I don’t see any particular reason to disagree with the method of data collection. I would like to see a regional breakdown of the users and the numbers weighted by regional demographics to see if the trend holds but still very fascinating.

    One thing that doesn’t surprise me is that Asian Men are more interested in dating Asian Women than Asian Women are interested in dating Asian Men. My father took flak for marrying a White Woman from both his parents but they didn’t care that his sisters all married White Men (since they all married into moneyed or professional families). Actually every member of his extended family in his generation married a White person so everybody in my generation is half Chinese/half White and I’m talking dozens of families. Most of us are still college aged or thereabouts but the marriages I’ve seen so far lead generation 4 to 1/4 Chinese/3/4 White.

    Anyhow, very interesting info and I’d love to see it further explored because I wonder how regional differences play into the numbers.

  39. Ron Leon

    It’s not racism, its a PREFERENCE.

    Some people are simply more attracted to a certain pheno and genotype above all others, usually one that matches their own. Thats a preference.

    Is this a crime, somehow?

  40. Casual Observer

    @Aaron: First, given that I said I occasionally do find a few black women to be very attractive I’m not sure how your response really answers my question.

  41. Amber

    I am actually on OK Cupid. And as a black female, i dont mind dating white guys. I see good looking white men all the time, but i don’t message them for fear that they don’t respond, or arent into black women. So maybe that’s how the white males feel about contacting someone outside of their race? just my thoughts..

  42. I am curious how these stats are normed against the distribution of race in the okc population. I don’t think a simple function would correctly capture all of the dynamics. (For example, if white men are the majority of men on the site and white women are the majority of women on the site, this might be a case of self selection. Or of people joining the site already having an idea of the racial distribution.)

    Somewhat ironically, i question if most of the people replying to this post understand stats very well, or if they understand racism very well. the intersection of the two can be a very dangerous place.

    “It’s likely that any dating site (and indeed any collection of people) would exhibit messaging biases similar to what I’ve written up.”

    I would like to point out that when you say any collection of people you in fact mean a very particular range of distributions. All one needs to do is slightly skew any of the populations (which happens WAY more online than it does in real life) and I’d expect the results across the board would change. (Because people who are less attracted to the people on this site, are less likely to be on this site in the first place.)

  43. Ron

    Interesting data… not at all surprising however.

    Why do “matches” and “quiver” matches have NOTHING to do with the kind of person you are looking for? What is it you are “matching” ?

  44. Kenpar

    @Brian Chin: Man your surprised that Asian women preferred other men? I’m not. Actually down here in Houston, it seems that Asian women date only White Men. I’m not kidding. I actually started to try and keep an eye out for AM/AF couples. What I noticed was pretty interesting. Where do you live?

  45. Erin

    Hey! I don’t reply to white guys neither lol.. It is not racist to only be attracted to your own race. It can’t be helped. Every time I tried to date someone of a different race, I regretted it dearly. When they see a woman of their own race they stare like they are deprived, or their friends and families made me feel like an alien. . I started out a color blind tree hippie and was MADE to be “racist”. Plus I am fairly sure that same race babies have stronger immune systems and don’t get racial harassment as much at school.

  46. R

    To everyone saying “It’s not racism, people just naturally prefer those who look like themselves”: That’s not what the graphs show. That would show as a green DIAGONAL on the graphs. What we have here is not people prefering their own, but people prefering whites. So, there are two hipothesis:

    a) Most everyone is racist, and look to mate with people from the historically dominant group.
    b) Whites are not racists, they just prefer their own. The rest of the people are racist and look to mate with people from the historically dominant group.

    And, of course, another note: No one is saying you *personally* are racist. This all is just a matter of statistics.

  47. GucciMang

    I actually don’t care about the results. What I think is more pathetic is the responses here. Minorities give whites too much power. Who cares if they accept you or not? Why are you begging them to like you? No offense to white people, but for the most part, I find their look to be very plain and unappealing anyway so it baffles me when people are upset that white people are excluding them from dating. For me, I don’t generally find white women physically appealing so why would I care whether she screened me out or not because I’m a Black man? I wish more white boys around my campus didn’t find like Black women the way this internet thing says they don’t too because they are taking the best ones we got. I hate that a lot of brothas are begging white women to like them too because they mess the game up for me. Now every fat white chick thinks every brotha no matter how outta her league he is will give her a chance because a bunch of uncle toms walking around with their mind set on “anything white”.

    But to keep it real, this isn’t racism and its silly to even bring up the word because racism carries far greater weight than me giving a crap or not whether a white girl wants to answer my message online. Racism is a systematic structure that is aimed at keeping whites on top and minorities, namely Blacks, at the bottom. It creates an unbalanced playing field, which has shet to do with who you prefer dating.

  48. kahluadiva

    What’s wrong wrong with admitting to your prejudice? Everyone trying to talk around it is just silly. How legitimate do you think “I am not racist, I just like men who have jobs and speak proper English…”

    This just helps me, as a Black woman, save money and time, and it reinforces what I’ve experienced in life. Someone made a joke about Black women and Asian men needing to hook up, “since no one wants us.” I thank that was rude, ut the kernel in the idea should work for Black women: broaden your horizons!

  49. GucciMang

    Oh yeah, and its obvious that Black women are continuously being targeted in these ’studies’ to attempt to assassinate their image publicly. In the past year, how many ’studies’ have come out telling us the same thing, that nobody likes Black women, in different ways?? Notice how they’re publicizing it EVERYWHERE so that Black women will eventually have no choice but to feel self conscious about being a Black woman? Even when its a Black woman who hasn’t had any problems whatsoever getting men to want her in her personal life she will eventually have no choice but to feel self conscious and inferior in her dealings with men because of the constant hammering in that nobody desires the group she belongs to? Black women are becoming the media’s punching bag and easy target.

    Notice how Indian and Black men have the lowest rates of responses but they cued in on Black women? Its because they know to attack a woman’s desirability in this society is one of the best targets you have if you want to tear her and her race down. At this point, they are doing it to Black women as far as desirability the way they have been doing it to Black men as far as trying to publicly label us criminals and deadbeats. People like the guy who did this research are actively trying to make Black women seem undesirable to races to further promote white superiority (because who is the furthest from whites women? black women of course).

    Anyway in short, Sistas hold your head. The meek shall inherit the Earth.

    One.