Mixed-race singles fare better than their single-race counterparts at the online dating game, a new study found.
Research to be presented Monday at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting showed that white, black, Asian and Hispanic singles all displayed a strong preference for mixed-race potential partners.
“Asian-white daters in particular are afforded a heightened status,” according to the study.
The University of Massachusetts-Amherst and University of Texas researchers analyzed millions of messages on an unidentified dating service from 2003 to 2010, measuring the rate of reciprocation between online love birds.
White men, in particular, were most likely to respond to mixed Asian-white women, in proportion to the rest of their choices. And black and Asian singles of both genders showed more interest in hooking up with black-white and Asian-white singles, respectively, researchers found
Hispanic women showed they were more likely to respond to Hispanic-white men.
While data suggests that Americans are open to dating a wide variety of people, it also shows a preference to multiracial singles over full-blooded minorities, authors of “Multiraciality in Cyberspace: Honorary Whiteness.
Hypo-descent or Something Else?”
“It helps in the dating world, if you are part-white or identify yourself as part-white,” said researcher Celeste Vaughan Curington, a UMass doctoral candidate.