Helen Lewis

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Can a dating site tell if you're a secret racist?

How the OkCupid website, started by four Harvard geeks, used statistics to unearth its users’ secret

By Helen Lewis Published 12 March 2012 1:00

True love: A neon sign by artist Chris Bracey. Photograph: Getty Images

When it comes to love and sex, how do you find out what people really feel, rather than what they say they do? Well, there are easier ways, but you could always start a dating website. Every time a user responds to a message, or clicks on a profile, she is telling you who she finds attractive, and who she's interested in starting a relationship with. Multiply that by a million or more and you have one hell of a database to plunder for insights.

That's what OkCupid did. Four Harvard graduates - Chris Coyne, Max Krohn, Christian Rudder and Sam Yagan - started the dating website in 2004. They'd previously run thespark.com, which offered personality quizzes such as the Purity Test (sample questions: "Have you ever fantasised about a family member? Have you ever fantasised about your own member?"), and decided to take the same slant with their dating venture. OkCupid users answer some, lots or occasionally all of the 4,000 questions written by the site or submitted by others about what they are looking for in a partner. They also give feedback on how useful the question was and how much weight they would give to the answer when setting up a date. That allows every candidate to create their own algorithm - the mathematical "secret sauce" that finds you matches.

While the site users were clicking away, trying to find someone to go for a drink with on Friday night, the founders were busy crunching their data. In June 2009 the first blog post popped up on OkTrends. "Since we went online in 2004, we've collected an enormous amount of data on human interactions," it said. "This blog was started as a way to share some of the things we've learned about people."

And boy, did they discover some interesting things. Some findings were quirky: that users of both genders added two inches on average to their height - even though shorter women got more messages. Or that using ur instead of you're or your in a first approach shrank the reply rate from 32 per cent to around 6 per cent.

In October 2009 a post titled "How Your Race Affects the Messages You Get" appeared. "We've processed the messaging habits of over a million people and are about to basically prove that, despite what you might've heard from the Obama campaign and organic cereal commercials, racism is alive and well," Rudder wrote. "It would be awesome if the other major online dating players would go out on a limb and release their own race data, too. I can't imagine they will: multimillion-dollar enterprises rarely like to admit the people paying them those millions act like turds."

Rudder showed that the percentages of matches were roughly even across all races. But white men got the most responses from almost all ethnic groups; white, Asian and Hispanic women preferred them to the exclusion of everyone else. Black women, on the other hand, get a bum deal - even though they reply more often than any other group to messages from every race, including their own, their messages get by far the fewest replies. "Essentially every race - including other blacks - singles them out for the cold shoulder," Rudder wrote.

He contrasted users' actions with their words: only 6 per cent overall said that interracial marriage was a bad idea, and 38 per cent that they would "strongly prefer" to date someone of their own racial background. (Among white users it was 45 per cent and among non-whites, 20.)

After that, the blog tackled such taboos as rape fantasies (these are deemed much more acceptable in Nevada than in New England, and in Lithuania than actual England) and even questioned the extent to which bisexuality exists. Noting that 80 per cent of self-identified bisexuals were interested in only one gender, Rudder concluded: "This suggests that bisexuality is often either a hedge for gay people or a label adopted by straights to appear more sexually adventurous to their (straight) matches."

Strange combinations

Last April, however, postings on the blog abruptly stopped. What happened? As the OkCupid number-crunchers would say, correlation does not imply causation, but it's hard to feel it wasn't anything to do with the site being acquired for $50m in February by its paid-for rival match.com. Was it intending to suffocate its free competitor? When I asked Yagan, the OkCupid chief executive, he said the blog would return but refused to be drawn further.

Then again, running a dating site exposes you to bits of humanity that maybe are best hidden. OkCupid was rare in making its data public, but our hidden prejudices and preferences are clearly well known to those in the industry. When I emailed Markus Frind, founder of Plenty of Fish, to ask about his rivals at OkCupid he said his matching system was better, because "we look at trends or patterns in couples . . . A female doctor is never going to date a carpenter. There are many, many combinations of relationships that will never happen or are very unstable." And he had the data to prove it.

What OkCupid showed was that, when it comes to choosing our partners, none of us is as progressive as we think. Perhaps the world is a better place for not revealing our deepest, darkest secrets?

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27 comments

Sun, 2012-07-22 23:19 — James Willby (not verified)

This is a question i've asked of myself, namely is it racist to admit you feel no attraction to members of a certain ethnic group. I don't think we can conflate the issue with their media representation - that's a separate issue - but on this point i think the answer to the question has to be no. If you simply don't find people from a particular group attractive, that is simply your personal preference. You're not actively prohibiting other people from dating them; they're just not for you. Attempting to impose a "progressive" viewpoint on what is a private subjective judgement could be highly dangerous.

Sat, 2012-07-21 21:58 — Jamie Glostown (not verified)

It does not matter - The3se is the same percent of racists on the internet as well as on the streets? on a regular hook-up dates

Fri, 2012-07-20 18:56 — Pavlova

It's often struck me as incongruous that women are split into racial groupings on porn sites. I think that their racial descriptions and the type of content they feature in, how it is marketed and its popularity, would be a reach seam of information for people interested in this area. I also find it interesting that porn is light on overt racism, but heavy on overt misogyny. I don't believe this is a social phenomenon that is independent of the unequal laws on racist and sexist media.

Fri, 2012-07-13 10:35 — Ivan Nikolov (not verified)

Of course! Everything is possible these days. There is no secrets in internet...
Best Regards, Nikolov

Wed, 2012-06-27 13:44 — computer support technician (not verified)

I’d need to check with you here. Which isn't one thing I often do! I enjoy reading a post that will make folks think. Also, thanks for permitting me to remark!

Tue, 2012-06-26 10:47 — Edua (not verified)

When I looking for a boy at a dating website, always check whether he married and his smoking and drinking habits. I think this is more important, then how tall is he...
társkereső

Sat, 2012-06-02 12:22 — Carlo (not verified)

The fact of adding inches to your height is something that happens often, sometimes makes it worse.
Come conquistare una ragazza

Tue, 2012-05-22 06:11 — Mattmark (not verified)

Can we confidently count any stated preference—indeed, any generalization whatever—that includes race as a component as conclusive evidence of racism? To the extent that preferences can be understood at all, don’t they seem to be rooted in a whole range of factors—aesthetic, psychological, philosophical, cultural, economic, political, etc.? Is it certain that all preferences that highlight particular races, nationalities or ethnic groups make no appeal to these other factors? If you favour tall blondes, science majors and dancers over short brunettes, humanities majors and singers, does it follow that you harbour prejudices against music and English literature or that you wish to deny political rights to non-blondes and dwarfs? If you express a categorical preference for the set of English-speaking smokers, does this inevitably mean you believe members of the French-speaking non-smokers’ set are ‘inferior’ in some way? If you are white, Irish and Christian and think you are likely to have more in common with someone of similar background than with a black Nigerian Muslim, isn’t it possible that this conviction owes more to common sense and a desire to avoid unnecessary complications than to genuine chauvinism or racism?

Why wouldn’t statistics reflect this sensible prudence rather than an indifference to the many foreseeable problems relationships can encounter when they cross ethnic, racial, cultural and/or religious lines? If you fantasize about discussing Husserl’s phenomenology of internal time consciousness or American Jewish literature at the highest level of abstraction, is it ‘racist’ to suppose your ideal conversationalist is likelier to come from New York or Frankfurt than Jamaica or Somalia? If it’s insisted that the answer is ‘yes,’ how much sense does it make to construe statistics disclosing this kind of supposed ‘racism’ as evidence of anything morally or socially culpable? How can it be immoral or anti-social simply to be aware of the statistical relationships that currently exist—for whatever complex of reasons—between race and other considerations where it’s perfectly legitimate to express a preference? How could you still be thought to be expressing genuine preferences if the sole eligible candidates were those that couldn’t be correlated with any apparent acknowledgment of racial difference—in a world where racial disparities are the statistical norm?

Fri, 2012-04-20 19:23 — Kevin Law (not verified)

Ok,

First off, as others have said, these are statistical games, not genuine reflections of people's opinions and views. You really can prove anything with statistics.

Secondly, even if we take the stats at face value, it would hardly appear to be surprising that various ethnic groups were most attracted to others from the same group. One might well conjecture that this would be 'hard wired into humans to maintin the homogeneity of the gene pool. Certainly from a cultural and religious point of view, some people's are FAR more conservative in wanting to maintain familial and ethnic ties than anyone from western culture might be.

To be honest, it's all a bit wearing. People so obsessed with their 'progressive agenda' that they see discrimination in everything.

Are we going to start having to have our relationships 'vetted' from now on by 'Progressives' t0 ensure tha we are meeting our diversity targets in relationship quota's? Gosh, I don't think even think Stalin went that far.

Fri, 2012-07-20 19:00 — Pavlova

Perhaps black women have more self-respect. They do afteral enjoy a rather mythical status amongst white men so have probably started to internalise that.

Fri, 2012-07-20 18:57 — Pavlova

I bet you have.

You yearn for a nice compliant brown girl don't you, like you've seen in the movies.

Sun, 2012-03-18 16:55 — TCStephens (not verified)

... actually a quick Google Image search reveals that I'm not completely right there. There have been one or two. Still I think my point about the white-centredness of the show still holds water.

Sat, 2012-03-17 19:31 — Simon (not verified)

What a load of toss! You can crunch numbers to prove anything. It doesn't prove the existence of hidden racism. What if some of the races had a lot more ugly people on the site than others? What if their profiles asked for people "who will love me more than anyone else and only have me as a friend. ONLY ME!!"

Break the data down by height, weight, finger length, ear diameter, average eye-lash length and you too will find a fascinating results. Why not find out the success rate of men with red / ginger hair and write about gingerism? Or a massive "small-earred men persecution" online.

Can people not find one type of person attractive over the other without having to give a "But I have black female friends!" defence? You can't control who you find attractive so can we please not overanalyse!!

Sat, 2012-03-17 19:44 — Dwight (not verified)

With some of your language it seems that you have bought into OkCupids faulty analysis, Helen.

"What OkCupid showed was that, when it comes to choosing our partners, none of us is as progressive as we think"

I think that gay-marriage should be legal. I wouldn't want to marry another man myself, or indeed go for a date with one. Is that to be taken as a sign that I'm secretly homophobic?

Sat, 2012-03-17 20:03 — Dwight (not verified)

"Or that using ur instead of you're or your in a first approach shrank the reply rate from 32 per cent to around 6 per cent."

The unprogessive swines! They are prejudiced against the illiterate.

Sun, 2012-03-18 17:30 — Freeman2

What would be the point of being a secret racist? Unless you have to pretend not to be one to get votes.

Sun, 2012-03-18 18:19 — Jake (not verified)

Very interesting article. What surprised me the most was the statistic regarding bisexuals. ("80 per cent of self-identified bisexuals were interested in only one gender.").

Sat, 2012-03-17 21:40 — Tesco Shelf Stacker (not verified)

Yeah .. I agree with Dwight and Simon here. This doesn't prove a thing really.

I think you've dropped a right clanger here Helen.

Sat, 2012-03-17 23:35 — fdfdfd

I thought the most interesting finding was that all ethnic groups preferred whites - Christian Rudder's language isn't what I would use, but there does seem to be a racial bias in favour of white people. It's also interesting that the general finding is that people aren't opposed to mixed-race marriages, they just don't want one themselves.

And as for my comment on the end, that refers to both OKC's stats and Frind's comment on the unlikely doctor/carpenter relationship.

Sun, 2012-03-18 00:46 — James (not verified)

I suspect that non-Caucasians, particularly women, may prefer white men from men of their own race because of a perception that they will treat them better than men of their own race. So the results are biased because of the treatment of women in minority cultures.

Sat, 2012-03-17 09:13 — Fergus Pickering (not verified)

Good Heavens, a female doctor and a carpenter seems an excellent match. Loadsa money and a well-appointed house. She can decide on the politics and he can decide on the house extension. Made in Heaven, I should say. Perhaps a black doctor and a white carpenter, eh?

Mon, 2012-03-19 21:09 — Doug (not verified)

What does it mean that people are progressive or not? In your article, do you mean that people who use those sights lie a lot about who they are? They probably do, we probably all do.

Tue, 2012-03-20 05:25 — Lonely Caucasian Male 1983 (not verified)

Fab news on the ethnic girls finding us hotter, sign me up!

I've certainly never ordered a woman not to wear a low cut dress in public, or slapped her around because she took a sip of booze.

Brooker & Huq is definitely the way forward these days, what an inspirational, delightful couple!

Middle-class white women don't want equality [in relationships], they demand complete control tinged with humiliation, f*** that, seen it sooooooo many times :(

Sun, 2012-03-18 15:12 — andyg (not verified)

"I thought the most interesting finding was that all ethnic groups preferred whites."
So what is your answer to this? That they must be racist? Racism is about race not skin colour.
"Christian Rudder's language isn't what I would use."
But you did use it my dear.
"there does seem to be a racial bias in favour of white people."
So what does this tell us?
"It's also interesting that the general finding is that people aren't opposed to mixed-race marriages, they just don't want one themselves."
Pressuming that you have a partner, could you just infrom us of his or her colour of skin.

Sun, 2012-03-18 15:30 — Ellmore Disco (not verified)

This is really interesting, one of the best blogs I've read on the New Statesman for a long while.

Sat, 2012-03-17 18:16 — Leo (not verified)

Very interesting. Thanks, Helen. Those last two paragraphs call to mind a piece Jemima Khan recently did on arranged marriages, whereby the matchmakers basically took the same factors into consideration when matching individuals. The result was a success rate of about 95%, or a max divorce rate of 5%.

Sun, 2012-03-18 16:53 — TCStephens (not verified)

I believe ITV's Take Me Out completely correlates with these findings ...

I only watch it sometimes (it's a horrendous programme but admittedly rather fun to take the mick out of with your friends), but I've always been struck by what seems to be the complete absence of black women on the show?

It's certainly more liberal when it comes to the men (though I can't recall any darker, black African men on the show either), but I honestly can't remember - ever once - seeing a black woman on that show as a contestant.