Contributed by: EFoley on Saturday, October 24 2009 @ 09:37 am
Last modified on
Free dating site OkCupid recently did several studies about online dating emails, looking at over a million of their members. They took a look first at the words that people wrote to one another and how those words correlated to response rate. (Here's a hint: Use proper English and not netspeak if you want replies.) But probably their most controversial article related to how your race determines the amount of replies you will receive.
We all want to assume that people are a lot more colorblind than they used to be, but OkCupid has found that's simply not the case. Even if we say that race doesn't matter, the numbers don't lie - it really does.
OkCupid's CEO, Sam Yagan, told NPR's Michel Martin that they were intrigued by the idea that they could get some answers to the questions people have about the role race plays in online dating. After all, when people are asked to state their dating preferences in their profile, they check off certain boxes. Do those boxes match up to the emails they deem worthy of a reply?
As it turns out, no. Black women, for example, reply most often to the messages sent to them. But their emails receive the least response. Indian men receive very low response rate, even with Indian women. And (surprise, surprise), white men and women receive the highest response rates of them all.
Another interesting factoid that OkCupid discovered in their member questions is that among white members, 93% say that they think interracial marriage is not a bad thing, but when asked whether they'd strongly prefer dating someone of their own race, 54% of whites say they would. (Across the board, the rest of the races said no.)
Does this mean you're out of luck for finding love online if you're not white? Absolutely not. But if OkCupid's discoveries are in fact sound (and coming from a bunch of math geeks, they should be!), then it may mean you'll have to be a little persistent and patient while looking for love online.