How
race matters in romance: Dating app reveals most men fancy Asian women
while majority of females prefer white men
- Data
from Facebook dating app, Are You Interested, found men from all
different races preferred a partner of another race over their own
- Researchers
looked at 2.4 million heterosexual interactions
- Most
men preferred Asian women (with the exception of Asian men) while
all women (except black women) were most drawn to white men
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A person’s race is
still a major factor when picking a partner, according to a study of
dating app users.
Research examining the
preferences of Facebook dating app, Are You Interested (AYI) found black
men and women receive fewer responses to their messages.
It also found that men
from all different races prefer a partner of another race over their
own.
The
study found men respond to women around there times more often than
women reply to men's messages and that the women studied were mostly
drawn to white men
The data comes from
AYI, which claims to be one of the largest Facebook dating apps with
over 70 million users and is similar to Tinder.
It works by letting
people looking for a date, or something more casual, flick through
profiles of users and click ‘yes’ to show their interest or ‘skip’ to
move on to the next.
When a user clicks
‘yes’ the person they are interested in receives a notification that
someone is interested and has the chance to respond.
The study looked at the
gender and ethnicity of the people who responded to a ‘yes’
notification, Quartz reported.
Research
examining the preferences of Facebook dating app, Are You Interested
(AYI) found black men and women receive fewer responses to their
messages
Researchers for the app
looked at 2.4 million heterosexual interactions by users who are mostly
aged 35 and over, to
collect the statistics.
The study found black
men and women get the lowest response rates to their messages.
Most men prefer Asian
women (with the exception of Asian men,) while all women (except black
women) are most drawn to white men, according to the research.
Interestingly, it found
men from all racial groups tend to prefer women from races other than
their own.
The study said Asian
women seem to favour advances from white men, as they responded to ‘yes’
messages almost eight per cent of the time – more than any other race.
Most
men prefer Asian women (with the exception of Asian men,) while all
women (except black women) are most drawn to white men, according to
the research
The data suggests that
men are least likely to respond to ‘likes’ from black women and did so
7.5 per cent of the time, which is less often than for Asian, Latino and
White women.
KEY FINDINGS OF THE AYI STUDY
- Men from all
different races prefer a partner of another race over their own.
- Black men and
women get the lowest response rates to their messages.
- Most men prefer
Asian women (with the exception of Asian men).
- All women (except
black women) are most drawn to white men.
- Asian women seem
to most strongly favour advances from white men.
- Men are least
likely to respond to ‘likes’ from black women.
- Men respond to
women around there times more often than women reply to men's
messages.
Men respond to women
around there times more often than women reply to men’s messages.
However, the findings
said men tend to be drawn to women from another race, contrast sharply
with another recent study.
Sociologist Professor
Kevin Lewis, from the UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences, found members of dating
sites are most likely to contact individuals who share their own racial
background on dating websites.
He studied the
interaction patterns of 126,134 users of dating website OkCupid.com in
the U.S. over a two-and-a-half month period.
The sociologist found
the tendency to initiate contact with someone from a shared race, is
strongest among Asians and Indians and weakest among whites, the study
said.
Researchers
for app, Are You Interested, looked at 2.4 million heterosexual
interactions to collect statistics. The data suggests black men and
women got the lowest response rates to their messages
While he said white
people were the most likely to consider relationships with people from
other ethnic backgrounds, he said the biggest 'reversals' in preference,
are observed among groups that display the greatest tendency towards
in-group bias.
Professor Lewis' study
also found that a person who is contacted by someone from a different
racial background for the first time is more likely to reply, which he
explains using his theory about 'pre-emptive discrimination'.
'Based on a lifetime of
experiences in a racist and racially segregated society, people
anticipate discrimination on the part of a potential recipient and are
largely unwilling to reach out in the first place,' he said.
'But if a person of
another race expresses interest in them first, their assumptions are
falsified and they are more willing to take a chance on people of that
race in the future.'
However, he warns that
the effect is sort-lived as people go back to habitual patterns in
around a week.
The
data suggests men are most likely to message a woman of a different race
to their own, but a recent study by sociologist Professor Kevin Lewis,
found members of dating sites are most likely to contact individuals who
share their own racial background