OkCupid just released a new survey that compared and contrasted the racial biases in dating from 2009 – 2014. The results are very interesting, and I think within the last 5 years we’ve seen an interesting shift in the mindsets of people of all races. I’ll discuss the results of the survey in terms of the Asian demographics since this is an Asian website after all. Keep in mind this is just OkCupid and it just takes results from people who’ve signed up to use a dating site. I will say that OkCupid obviously does have a lot of members and a lot of data (25 million members) so the results of this survey shouldn’t be taken too lightly. With all that being said, every conclusion found in this survey should be taken with a grain of salt.

From the OkCupid site:

The values in these tables are “preference vs. the average.” Think of them as how people weigh race in deciding attraction. So, for example, in the bottom-right corner of the lower table, you see that white women think white men are 17% more attractive than the average guy. Move one square to the left, and you see that they think Latinos are 1% above average, and so on.

Here are the results from 2009.

And here are the results from 2014.

There are some interesting tidbits that we can gather about the last 5 years. It’s difficult to comprehend this list on first glance, so I’ll break it down for you guys.

Asian women now like Asian men more than White men.

In 2009, Asian women rated White men as their #1 choice for dating, and the preference for White men was 60% higher than Asian men (16% vs 10%). Now Asian women rate Asian men 33% higher than White men (24% to 18%). They still like White men a lot more than any other race except Asians, and the ratings for Black and Latino men drastically went down.

White men like Asian women the most, even more than White women.

“Yellow fever” is real. Most races had a preference for their own race, but White men now prefer Asian women over White women. In fact they prefer them a whole 50% more than White women. In the past 5 years that has changed because White men used to prefer to date White women over Asian women.

Asian women are the MOST desired race of woman.

Overall Asian women had the highest scores out of any race of woman, with Latinas coming in second place, and surprisingly White women coming in 3rd.

Asian men are the 2nd LEAST desired race of men.

Asian men were not the least desired race on OkCupid. That terrible distinction goes to Black men. White men were the most desired.

Conclusions for Asians.

• Asian women are preferring their own race more, which is great for us Asian men.
• White men like Asian girls more than 5 years ago, so “yellow fever” is definitely alive and real.
• Overall, White guys are considered the “ideal” type across the board.
• Asian guys have it bad, but we’re not that far off from Latinos, and Black guys have it worse than us. Bigger picture is that most men of a minority race don’t have it great on American-made sites like OkCupid.

Some interesting facts, tidbits, and questions to ponder that deal with other races.

• As Asian men, we frequently blame the media's portrayal of us as the reason why negative stereotypes exist (small penis, nerd, effeminate, etc). Yet Black men were the lowest rated and they have a lot of positive masculine stereotypes (such as large penis, wealthy, tall, athletic, dark, rappers, athletes, etc). So what's really going on here? Are the negative stereotypes facing Black men outweighing all of the positive stereotypes? Or perhaps is the OkCupid crowd just very skewed.
• Latino men were the 2nd highest rated race of men. Interesting.
• White women were the 3rd highest rated race of women. If “Caucasian” beauty ideals exist, how come White women were ranked so low on this survey? Is there a reason that White men are seen as the “most desired race” while White women are just middle of the pack?

Written by kevinhype