PlentyOfPersonality Study Reveals Personality Traits Of Singles By City

Did you know crafty ladies love Houston, men in Seattle seek outdoor adventure, and intellectual singles flock to Washington, DC?

It's hard to put much stock in the interests section on online dating profiles. Occasionally you may connect with something, but mostly it's a lot of boring clichés (“I like traveling and hanging out with my friends”). All most of us use the interests section for is scanning for red flags and looking for microscopic signs of compatibility.

Well, it turns out those interests may serve a more important purpose. Using an interest-based algorithm, PlentyOfFish examined the dating profiles of more than 10 million singles over the age of 21 to group them into personality types. The results were released as a new research study called PlentyOfPersonality.

The research identified the top 20 personality archetypes, based on corresponding interests, of singles in 11 major American cities. The data was then broken down by city and gender to asses how differences and similarities in the personality types might impact dating habits.

The 20 personality types are: Artist, Bar Game Buff, Cultured Urbanite, Curious George, Eternal Optimist, Family First, Fast and Furious, Happy-Go-Lucky, Health Buff, Intellectual, Live Event Fan, Mainly Mainstream, Pinteresters, Romantic, Salt of the Earth, Social Butterfly, Sports Fanatic, Weekend Warrior, Well-Rounded, and Outdoor Adventurer.

Scanning the data, it's clear that some cities have greater potential for compatibility than others. Men and women in Detroit, for example, sync up on three of the four top personality types: Weekend Warriors, Eternal Optimists, and Bar Game Buffs.

On the other hand, singles in Boston may have a hard time finding their matches. Female residents are Cultured Urbanites, but most men are partying Weekend Warriors. A similar split is seen in Seattle, where men are Weekend Warriors and Outdoor Adventurers, but women fit into the quieter and more creative categories of Pinteresters and Artists.

So what we can we learn from POF's personality study?

First, don't skip over the interests section. You may be tempted to say “I dunno,” “Ask me,” “Too many to list here,” or leave it blank, but you're missing a valuable opportunity.

When you do fill it out, consider your answers carefully. Discerning visitors are using your interests, consciously or subconsciously, to construct a portrait of your personality. Make sure it's an accurate representation of who you are and make sure the statement it's making is positive.

If all else fails, perhaps it's time to pack up and move. Love could be waiting across state lines. For more on the dating service which conducted the study, you can read our Plenty of Fish review.