Racial preference statistics on OkCupid dating site

In short, our method is this: we host an ever-changing database of user-submitted questions, covering every imaginable topic, from spirituality to dental hygiene. To build their own match algorithms, our users answer as many questions as they please (the average is about 230). When answering a question, a user also picks her how her ideal match would answer and how important the question is to her. It’s very simple, and it removes all subjectivity on our part. We simply crunch the numbers.

So, for example, if two people match each other 69%, what it means is that they are very likely to like each other, based on their own definitions of what makes a person attractive, not ours. OkCupid is no more responsible for people’s match percentages than Microsoft Excel is responsible for their net worth. Again, our users write the match questions, choose which ones to answer, and determine how important each answer is. We just do the math.
But their selection criterion does not ask about their potential partner's ethnic background. Hence, that becomes the missing variable; and just how much that missing variable actually affects people's choices in a potential partner despite how well they may match up with that person, OkCupid attempts to uncover.




Here we see according to OkCupid based on users' 'match' how people "should" respond to a 'message' and their actual response.

As a whole, in the case between Asian females and Black males, black men should be responding just 42 percent of the time based on how well they match. However, their reply rate is an overwhelming 55 percent. Thus, according to OkCupid, we're seeing "race" playing a factor in the dating game.

In line two, when a black male sends a message of interest to an Asian female, the Asian female should be responding at a 27 percent rate, but their actual response is just 17 percent. The implication is that Asian females are turned off by the man's black racial background.

* Note: Green color indicates "positive strong preference" response; red indicates "negative strong preference" response; and yellow indicates "neutral preference" response rate.

Interestingly, we can see that White Males are disinclined to respond to black females, Indian females are disinclined to respond to Indian males, Native American females are positively inclined to respond to Native American males and White females respond to White males as "expected", ie, neutral level response.

Now we're going to get more specific into race-by-race comparisons.



Here, we see how well various races generally match up. Higher numbers reflects better match. Numbers on the outside right and outside bottom indicate average scores for their respecive roles and columns.

Interesting finds:
• White males and white females enjoy the highest score overall with 62.

• Following white males, white females match best with Asian and Native American males. They match least with Indian and black males.

• Asian females have the lowest overall matching scores among all females with 59.1. White females have the highest matching scores overall with 61.5.

• Asian males have the second highest matching scores among all males behind white males. Black males and Indian males have the two lowest matching scores among males.

• Asian males and Asian females have a pretty much average matching score with 59.


Preliminary Conclusion: From these stats, white males and white females match up best together based on non-race based preferences. Among males, Asian males enjoy the second best matching score overall. Black males have the lowest matching scores including both males and females (they are the least compatible with everyone). Among females, Asian females have the lowest matching scores (least compatible with everyone).

Now that we've gotten an idea of what the matching rates are, we're now going to take a look at actual response rate where race does play a factor.



Here, males are the senders of the message and it's up to the females to decide whether to respond or not respond knowing the actual racial background of the interested party.

Interesting finds:
• Asian females have a negative strong preference for Asian males and pretty much everyone except white males, but even this is just neutral level. Hence, Asian females exhibit no strong response to anyone in particular. With an overall score of 25.7, they're the second pickiest among all females behind Indians. Following white males, Asian females prefer Middle Eastern males and Native American males.

• Although White females matched second best with Asian males, they prefer them near the bottom when race is a known factor.

• Black females show a positive strong response to everyone except black males. In fact, black males are the second least prefered among all males with a score of just 21.7. Indian males scratch the bottom of the barrel with 20.8 followed by Asian males.

• Indian females least preferred Asian and Indian males.

• Asian males got the most love from black females, followed by Native American females, then 'Other-females'.

• White females preferred white males overall, followed by Native America males, 'Other-males', then Middle Eastern males.

• Overall, the racial hierarchy among men goes like this: White males, Native American males, 'Other- males', Middle Eastern males, Pacific Islander males, Hispanic/Latin males, Asian males, Black males, and lastly, Indian males.


OkCupid's conclusion was this:

* Black women write back the most. Whether it’s due to talkativeness, loneliness, or a sense of plain decency, black women are by far the most likely to respond to a first contact attempt. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and, overall, black women reply about a quarter more often that other women.

* 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.

This time, we look at it in reverse, where the females are the message senders.

Interesting finds:
• Asian males respond to 'Other-famales' the most, followed by in second place (4 tied): Pacific Islander females, Middle Eastern females, Indian females, and Hispanic/Latin females. This group is followed by Asian females and white females, both tied with a score of 48.

• Everyone responds to Black-females with 'negative strong preference', with Asian males preferring them the least, followed by white males and Pacific Islander males (both tied).

• Black males respond to Asian females and Middle Eastern females with the highest positive preference (both tied). Least loved among black males are black females.

• For Asian Females, they get the highest favorable response from: Black males, Middle Eastern Males and Indian and 'Other males' (both tied). White males give them the least time of day.

• White males prefer Middle Eastern females most, followed by Pacific Islander females, Other females, and then Asian females and white females (tied).

• Middle Eastern females are most loved overall with an average total score of 49.5.

• Why do White males have a relatively low response rate towards Asian females? Plausibly, many of the Asian females on the site could be overseas residents. But then that would leave unanswered why other ethnic minorities respond to Asian females in higher numbers.

• Why do White males have a relatively favorable preference for Middle Eastern women? It's a mystery . . .

• From our earlier match statistics, we know that Asian males have the highest match rating with white females and Pacific Islander females. So why do they respond at a lower rate to white females compared to Hispanics/Latin females, Indian females, etc? The answer is perhaps that for white females, Asian males rank near the bottom. Hence, it could be the case that the messages Asian males do get from white females are from FUGLIER white females. Thus the lower than expected response rate.


OkCupid's conclusion was this:

* 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.)

Now, here's an interesting set of tables:



Clearly, we can see that to the extent racial preferences reflect "racism" (and they don't necessarily), whites are the MOST racist.

OkCupid tries to rationalize the findings:

It’s probably not just OkCupid users that are like this. I don’t want anyone walking away from all this thinking that OkCupid users exceptionally horrible people. 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.

Conclusion

How should one interpret these numbers? Do these statistics reflect overall preferences and biases among minorities and whites?

Answer: It's uncertain and no.

Among whites, it's uncertain. But among minorities, no. Why?

Because minorities who are interested in their own ethnic group are unlikely to seek partners in a majority white site. As can be seen from the numbers, the members are overwhelmingly white. As a result, it can only be construed that minorities who come on OkCupid (and similar sites) are very likely seeking white partners from the onset, and secondly, but to a lesser extent, partners not of their own background and not necessarily white.

In other words, minorities who post profiles on OkCupid are a self-selected group who seek white partners, broadly speaking.

The inability to filter/search by race/ethnic background lends further weight to this argument (we mention more here).

The greater level of openness to interracial relationships among ethnic minorities also don't necessarily reflect lower degrees of "racism" or "race preference". Obviously, if one goes on a site in order to seek out a partner from a different background, it goes without saying that one is open to interracial relationships.

Conversely, it may also be the case that the white males and females who come on OkCupid (and similar sites) specifically seek white partners. If they preferred a particular minority, it's logical that they should post a profile on a specific minority based board, if it's available. But the inclination to do so may possibly be weaker than among other groups.

In short, the conclusion one might draw from the data is that the numbers reflect ethnic minorities who are, broadly speaking, 1) prefer white partners, 2) prefer not to date someone of their own specific background, and 3) perhaps moderately open to dating someone of a different race, not white and not their own.

One of the more interesting dynamics to perhaps takeaway from this is - among young people who prefer white partners - how they view other ethnic groups.

Unsurprisingly, the more you look white, in general, the more you stand on top of the dating totem pole among this self-selected group. Hence, Middle Eastern males, Native American males and 'Other males' stand near the stop.

And at the bottom: black and Indian males.

But outside the self-selected bunch of philo-whites, in the larger population, reality is arguably quite different.