OkCupid Wonders “What If There Weren’t So Many White People?”
- Friday, April 15 2011 @ 09:14 am
- Contributed by: ElyseRomano
- Views: 2,945
The OkTrends blog has already taken a look at "How Your Race Affects The Messages You Get" and "The REAL 'Stuff White People Like,'" and now the OkCupid research team is at it again, this time taking on the subject of race by examining race relations in America and asking the question: What if there weren't so many white people?
"Since most thinking about race hinges on the fact that one particular race predominates," writes Christian Rudder, "what if, using statistical models, you could make that predominance disappear?" Currently, white members receive more messages than non-white members on OkCupid, though it is unclear if this is an indication of their "popularity" or their population. If the world - or at least the users of OkCupid - were more racially balanced, would that statistic change?
To find out, OkCupid ran a study based on 82 million messages sent by members over the course of the last few months. The researchers found that OkCupid is actually less white than the rest of the Internet in America, but they were unable to make direct group-to-group comparisons because Quantcast, the media measurement service that provides their demographics, doesn't provide multiracial data. White members made up 74% of the OkCupid population, followed by:
Other: 13%
Latino: 5%
Black/Asian: 4% each (a tie)
White members also received the vast - and I mean vast - majority of messages sent on the site (a gigantic 89%!). In fact, white members were the most popular message recipients regardless of the senders' ethnicity.
After gathering the basic data, the OkCupid team experimented with their findings, using Asian users as an example. They found that Asian members sent 3 times as many messages to white members as they did to other Asian people. The breakdown:
White: 71%
Asian: 23%
Latino: 5%
Black: 2%
Taking into account the fact that white members outnumber Asian members 19:1, however, the findings can be viewed differently. Rudder rearranges all the ratios from the study and, via a little math wizardry, comes to the conclusion that, if there were an equal number of Asian people and white people on the site, Asian users would actually overwhelmingly prefer to message other Asians. In a world in which the population was not dominated by white folks, in which every user had a completely equal chose, the average number of monthly messages each ethnic group received would be very different.
...but you'll have to tune in next time to find out the details!
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