Race and Online Dating

• • digital culture, social networking sites

Valentine’s Day for many people means (re-)subscribing to an online dating service. According to some estimates, more than 20 million people per month use online dating services.

Does race affect dating? The folks at OKCupid have interesting data about this, and the answer is: yes. They’ve been collecting data on their site (and others they’ve acquired) about racial patterns in dating from 2009-2014.

(CC image from Flickr user @atbondi)

 

OKCupid analyzed their internal data by race and found that: “although race shouldn’t matter … it does. A lot.” 

Have things changed in dating patterns at OKCupid since 2009? Their answer: “In some ways, no. OkCupid users are certainly no more open-minded than they used to be. If anything, racial bias has intensified a bit.”

The way OKCupid works, in case you’ve never dipped your toe in the waters of online dating, is that you set up an ad, or “Profile” describing yourself, your interests, what you’re looking for in a date.  Then, when people read your profile, they can send you a “Message” within the site, indicating their interest in you.

What the data show pretty clearly is that in figuring out who gets “messages”  and “replies” – or traffic from potential dates – race matters. The patterns for the straight crowd looks like this (from here):

  • 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 onlyrespond well to white men. More significantly, these groups’ reply rates to non-whites is terrible.
  • Black women write back the most. 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.

The interesting contradiction is that OKCupid also asks people “Is interracial marriage a bad idea?” and, as with most liberals, the responses are overwhelmingly positive in the direction of “no, not a bad idea” (98% answering in the negative to the question). They also ask “Would you prefer to date someone of your own skin color/racial background?” Again, a huge majority (87%) say no. OKCupid chalks this up to a collective “schizophrenia” about race.

In same-sex dating “the prejudices are a bit less pronounced,” but the predominance of white men persists.  Here’s what the gay-lesbian dating looks like (from here):

  • White gays and lesbians respond by far the least to anyone.
  • Black gays and lesbians get fewer responses. This is consistent with the straight data, too.
  • Asian lesbians are replied to the most, and, among the well-represented groups, they have the most defined racial preferences: they respond very well to other Asians, Whites, Native Americans, and Middle Easterners, but very poorly to the other groups.

The folks analyzing this data at OKCupid rightfully note that they’re the only ones (among dating sites) releasing this data, and take pains to note that there’s likely nothing uniquely ‘biased’ about their users:

It’s surely not just OkCupid users that are like this. In fact, it’s any dating site (and indeed any collection of people) would likely exhibit messaging biases similar to what [is] written up [here]. 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.

It’s an interesting point that highlights in many ways, how facile our thinking is when it comes to race and racism.

We’re stuck, it seems, in the collective myth that “racism” looks like Bull Connor, when in fact, racism can – and often does – appear to be “well educated, younger, and progressive.”  As Sharon P. Holland notes in her excellent book, The Erotic Life of Racism (Duke U Press, 2012), these quotidian, daily choices about who we choose to love shape not only individual, personal lives, but also the contours of collective society.

 

For Valentine’s Day: Race, Racism and Online Dating

• • digital culture, racism

It’s Valentine’s Day.  Here in the U.S., the first mass-produced valentines of embossed paper lace were produced and sold in the mid-19th century (about 1847). Now, the Greeting Card Association estimates that some 190 million cards will be exchanged this Valentine’s Day.

(CC image from Flickr user @atbondi)

Of course, we’re living in a digital age now, so Valentine’s Day is marked by a Google Doodle and, for many people, by (re-)subscribing to an online dating service. According to some estimates, more than 20 million people per month use online dating services.

Increasingly, the research indicates that online dating is shaped not only by the desire to find love (for the moment or something more lasting) by race and racism. For example, this research on heterosexual dating and this research on same-sex dating indicates some interesting patterns along racial lines.

The online dating service OKCupid analyzed their internal data by race (in 2010) and found that: “although race shouldn’t matter … it does. A lot.” The way OKCupid works, in case you’ve never dipped your toe in the waters of online dating, is that you set up an ad, or “Profile” describing yourself, your interests, what you’re looking for in a date.  Then, when people read your profile, they can send you a “Message” within the site, indicating their interest in you.

What the data show pretty clearly is that in figuring out who gets “messages”  and “replies” – or traffic from potential dates – race matters. The patterns for the straight crowd looks like this (from here):

  • 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.
  • Black women write back the most. 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.

The interesting contradiction is that OKCupid also asks people “Is interracial marriage a bad idea?” and, as with most liberals, the responses are overwhelmingly positive in the direction of “no, not a bad idea” (98% answering in the negative to the question). They also ask “Would you prefer to date someone of your own skin color/racial background?” Again, a huge majority (87%) say no.  OKCupid chalks this up to a collective “schizophrenia” about race.

In same-sex dating “the prejudices are a bit less pronounced,” but the predominance of white men persists.  Here’s what the gay-lesbian dating looks like (from here):

  • White gays and lesbians respond by far the least to anyone.
  • Black gays and lesbians get fewer responses. This is consistent with the straight data, too.
  • Asian lesbians are replied to the most, and, among the well-represented groups, they have the most defined racial preferences: they respond very well to other Asians, Whites, Native Americans, and Middle Easterners, but very poorly to the other groups.

The folks analyzing this data at OKCupid rightfully note that they’re the only ones (among dating sites) releasing this data, and take pains to note that there’s likely nothing uniquely ‘biased’ about their users:

It’s surely not just OkCupid users that are like this. In fact, it’s any dating site (and indeed any collection of people) would likely exhibit messaging biases similar to what [is] written up [here]. 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.

It’s an interesting point that highlights in many ways, how facile our thinking is when it comes to race and racism.  We’re stuck, it seems, in the collective myth that “racism” looks like Bull Connor, when in fact, racism can – and often does – appear to be “well educated, younger, and progressive.”  As Sharon P. Holland notes in her excellent book, The Erotic Life of Racism (Duke U Press, 2012), these quotidian, daily choices about who we choose to love shape not only individual, personal lives, but also the contours of collective society.

 

Race, Racism and Online Dating: What the Research Tells Us

• • race, racial segregation, racism, scholarship

According to some estimates, more than 20 million people per month use online dating services.  Sociologist Andrea Baker has looked at the phenomenon of online dating in a number of publications, including two books, Double Click, and Online Matchmaking (edited with Monica T. Whitty and James A. Inman).  Baker points to four factors that indicate what makes for a successful relationship online: (1) meeting place, where they first encountered each other online; (2) obstacles, barriers to getting together overcome by the couples, such as distance and previous relationships; (3) timing, period spent writing or talking before meeting offline, and how intimate they became before meeting offline; and (4) conflict resolution, ability of the people to resolve problems in communication (Baker, CyberPsychology & Behavior. August 2002, 5(4): 363-375). None of the factors Baker identified point to race, nor is this the focus of her research.   More recently, however, studies are beginning to emerge that examine the phenomenon of interracial dating in the context of online dating sites.

facebook ad
(Creative Commons License photo credit: irina slutsky)

Psychologist Gerald Mendelsohn (Emeritus, UC-Berkeley) is leading some of this research, which is as yet unpublished in peer-review.  In an interview with TIME Magazine, he said:

“The Internet has changed things. There is no segregation on the Internet. So the question then becomes, When you have a free situation where people can contact whom they please, what will happen?”

Mendelsohn is right in framing this question, I think.  If we’re really as post-racial as many claim, then race shouldn’t be a factor in dating or mate selection.  It’s a question that needs to be put to the test, and online dating sites are an excellent way to do that, in part because of the user profiles, where race is an issue.
Mendelsohn’s study involved evaluating the user profiles on an (unnamed) online dating site, and looking at the ones that indicated some sort of racial preference. Some profiles to reflect a desire to date people only of the same race, others indicate the subscriber is open to dating someone of another race or of any race. Using these user-generated profiles, researchers compared their stated racial preferences with the races of the people they ended up contacting.  The results indicate a strong preference on the part of whites for dating other whites.   Here’s the summary from TIME:

Taken as a group, whites, women and older people were choosiest about sticking with others of their color. More than four of five whites contacted other whites, while just 3% reached out to blacks. The ratios stayed the same for young and older people, too — 80% chose not to contact others from outside their race. And only 5% of white subscribers responded to inquiries from someone from another race.

What about people who said they were indifferent? For whites who claimed to be, about 80% still contacted whites. Blacks who said they were color-blind when it comes to Cupid were more likely to contact a white than to contact a black.

So, what’s the deal? Are online daters racist? Are they hypocrites? Another news report on the study quotes Mendelsohn again to address this question.   He theorizes that the pattern of black people online being more willing to date whites “simply reflects how upward mobility”  and an effort to assimilate.  On the other hand, dating outside of whiteness may present “more of a hassle for a white person in America” and that dating choice may be viewed  “as a social downgrade.” According to Mendelsohn, for whites the calculation is simple:

“You will have trouble with family, with friends, and every time you go to a restaurant people will be looking at you. So you think, Why bother?”

This study suggests a deep-seated white racial frame, that both privileges whiteness and marks black people as “less desirable” dating partners.   This online pattern also reflects offline trends.   The U.S. Census data from 2000 shows that only one percent of American marriages take place between a black and white person.

Future Research. Clearly, there’s lots of room for future research in this area since the one study I was able to find about this isn’t even published yet.   I’d expect that there will be rich research opportunities to explore online dating sites that are specifically targeting people seeking interracial relationships (like the ad pictured above).     This is something that enraged the avowed white supremacists I studied in Cyber Racism, but there’s obviously more to be said about these sites.

I’d also be curious about how these patterns of race overlap and intersect with sexuality.  The research I’ve seen so far has looked almost exclusively at patterns among heterosexuals at online dating sites.  While straight people are clearly the heaviest users of such sites, given recent lawsuits against eHarmony, there is a desire on the part of some gays to participate in the sites.   And, contrary to the dating patterns of heterosexuals, LGBT folks are much more likely to be in interracial relationships (updated: e.g., see this discussion – noted by Brandon in comments – and this one), so online dating for this group may reflect these offline patterns as well.

Once more, the research indicates that the Internet is changing our social world, in this instance how people meet potential dating partners.  Woven into these new technologies, however, are old patterns of race and racism.