Race and attraction
For many years the online dating site OkCupid produced the OkTrends blog, where they analysed their data to explore people's dating habits. In 2009 they looked at racial preferences — the original blog has disappeared, but a copy of the article can be found here . The article analysed the data through the lens of American racial politics, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, concluded that their users are racist. However, there are a few problems with their analysis. First, they measured preferences by looking at how frequently people responded to initial messages. However, this measures not just the preferences of the recipient, but the judgement of the sender. For example, a sender who mostly contacts attractive people will almost certainly get a lower response rate than one who contacts unattractive ones. Does judgement vary by race? We have no way of knowing. Second, much of their analysis is based on men responding to women's messages. But in online dating — as in the real world —...