What Online Dating Tells Us About Human Relationships, with Christian Rudder | Big Think
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ธ.ค. 2014
- What Online Dating Tells Us About Human Relationships
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Christian Rudder is co-founder of OkCupid and author of the New York Times bestselling book "Dataclysm," in which he harnesses user data collected from dating websites to analyze human behavior. In this video interview Rudder shares examples of OkCupid stats that tell a larger story about why relationships form.
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CHRISTIAN RUDDER:
Christian Rudder is co-founder, general manager and editorial director of OkCupid. Rudder previously worked with fellow Harvard alumni on SparkNotes.com, which Barnes & Noble bought in 2001. He is the author of Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking).
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TRANSCRIPT:
Christian Rudder: I started this whole project by looking at OkCupid and the data and writing the blog that I did, and hopefully will one day do again very soon. And it's the best data set in the world because it's people, all strangers, all making judgments of one another, all probably trying to sleep with each other, which also adds a certain piquancy to the whole thing. So, you know, you look at the data and you really get a kind of special window into people's psyche. Kind of like if you could see everything that was going on in a big bar on a Friday night. And you see that men are the kind of pursuers in relationships at a four to one ratio and kind of correspondingly, women, because they're getting four messages to every one they send out, like they respond a lot less and response rates track directly with how hot the writer was, is.
But then you also see that once people start talking and they establish a rapport, which for OkCupid is four messages going back-and-forth, that attractiveness kind of goes out the window at that point. Your personality takes over after the fourth message. You see that in general women's opinions of men's looks, and again on average, is about half of what men's opinions of women's looks are so they kind of get a 50 percent discount just ice cold. On Tinder it's actually a lot more. It's something like a ten percent discount or ninety percent discount sorry the other way. They go at ten. So these environments I think, I can't prove this, my intuition is that the more sexual an environment the larger that discount from women to men.
OkCupid's user base in theory on paper is as liberal as you could ever want it to be. You ask people if they're a Democrat, if they're progressive, yes, yes, yes, you know, two, three to one. We're all highly coastal. Very little red state, very blue. On a piece of paper OkCupid should be a very progressive place. And maybe it is because who knows what the rest of the world is like. But the data that we have, you know, black users get three quarters of the messages, the positive votes. They're attractiveness rating are three quarters of an average white user, or Latino user for that matter. They get replied to about three quarters of the time. It's pretty blanket. Asian men also get a similar discount, but not Asian women.
And then you go and you look at DateHookup, which is a site we run. You look at the data from Match.com and you see the exact same patterns, maybe not in the exact same ratios but the same basic up down yes no patterns when you compare any race with another race. So as suggested it's kind of, I won't say universal in the sense of permanent pattern, but it's certainly like a state of affairs right now in the American psyche. And those three sites alone they registered maybe 30 million people in the United States last year. So it's not like some small sample. I mean that's about half of the single and looking people in the country, to my best guess if you look at the census number. So it's pretty meaningful and a pretty depressing thing to kind of digest.
In so far as like Grindr or any of these other sites that kind of hook up apps are hook up apps for gay men, OkCupid is a little bit more of the relationship site and we have a very strong gay user base, male and female. So we get to look at their patterns and they're basically the same as straight patterns, which I think is meaningful in the context of marriage equality. Because certainly the pre-marriage relationships seem about the same when you actually go and look at the data, which I think is a strong argument for any type of relationship being held apart legally for sure.....
To read the transcript, please go to bigthink.com/videos/what-onli...
A brutally honest, data-driven look into actual dating behavior, unmotivated by political correctness. Excellent.
Yea, I'm a 23 yr old black guy that's tried a couple of those apps/sites and I never got a response back. Even with a few pictures, and a filled description of myself. I tried to talk to girls of any ethnic background, yet I believe due to my complexion and I'm not famous I was invisible. I spoke as a gentleman, and upheld myself with such a mature perspective.
Rudder comes across as very well spoken and intelligent. It's nice to know that he stays objective about analysing this data, it allows him to make some interesting insights.
Oh we've heard this shit a million times already, the annual dating site census.
Very interesting video - the guy is straight to the point, fast on delivery and doesn't rambles about.
online dating/chatting is great invention for me... introvert.
Interesting statistics. Thank you, Mr. Rudder. =)
I just wanted to state that I met my husband on OKCupid. I met other people as well. I met some douchebags, some assholes, some creepy people, some great people that I ended up being friends with with and one abusive bastard. However, within six months of using OKC, I had met my husband. We are now happily married. I did not have the same results on other sites. Most of the other sites were either not LGBT friendly (which is important to me as I am a pansexual) or were filled with people that I did not click with. I had a lot of great dates from OKC. I met a lot of interesting people. On other sites, I rarely had a second date because the first date was always a disaster.
This dude is about to explode! Dating Site Data Overload!!!!
It's one thing to get a reply for a message and count those, but it would be more interesting to see whether the reply was a positive or a negative one.
All those words for the message that it's really all about the picture.
i remember the first time i copy pasted messages.. about 7y ago. and a girl with another girl knew eachother and she was sooo strongly upset. I guess she felt belittled, unimportant that im disrespectful. People are pretty dumb animals )
This video is EXCELLENT! This guy proves how Americans can no longer communicate. We are two generations away from public schools offering Rhetoric and just LOOK at the result.
Classical education was about brain training, with everyone understanding that basic communication formed the foundation for people getting along and succeeding. Would you hire this guy? What would your life look like if this guy was your boss?
While he may think this presentation makes him look smart, in fact it's the opposite. He appears smug, clueless, and untrustworthy. All because he can't form and organize basic sentences and paragraphs.
Regardless of what you think of his communication, he's founded successful dating sites. Kind of dulls your point.
He's a little awkward in how he speaks; so what? A lot of great thinkers throughout history have shared this quality. Why don't you analyze some of Christian's writings for a more balanced assessment of the quality of his schooling? Classical education, in its constrictive, wrong, outdated, and narrow focus of developing only what's considered to be the most valuable intelligences - logical/math/linguistic - has left so many students behind. It squelches creativity and imagination: two of the most important skills to thriving in today's world. Christian has demonstrated these two abilities with his ingenuity in creating such a popular dating website, and I'm sure his bank account has benefited tremendously.
Public speaking vs real communication.....
"We are two generations away from public schools *offering Rhetoric and just LOOK at the result*."
Oh boy, isn't that rich coming from you!
generationutena
It all made sense. What didnt you understand?
Looks, height, race, money.
All the things you can't control (or can't change easily) matter the most to women!
As someone who has seen the seedy underbelly of the virtual dating world, with all of its uneven-handed-ness and politics, I feel having access to all of OKCupid's data would be just about the most depressing thing...
I don't know why people are acting so surprised and disheartened with the data. Okcupid is a pretty accurate reflection of reality, It's not revealing anything new. Looking at this from a racial standpoint, minorities, specifically African American women and Asian men have always been at the bottom of this totem pole of desirability/conventional attractiveness. If your eyes have been open long enough, you would know that, just look at the images of the media. What kind of beauty is celebrated on a regular basis? Speaking as a black woman, it's definitely not mine.
It's Jess I was speaking in a more general sense than just about the racial aspect. I can't remember the details of this particular video, but from what I remember looking into this subject and multiple videos, the evidence of racism in progressive metropolitan areas wasn't very conclusive. Of course in more rural, conservative areas, you have people answering that they wouldn't date outside their race, or had a preference for their race, etc. I believe they took it beyond that and were talking about how people have lower response rates to other races are or more likely to stick to their own kind, neither of which are innately indicative of racism. We have a lot of studies on the science of attraction and we know that people are generally more attracted to those who look like themselves, and those who look like the "average" of everyone. We also know that there are a lot more factors that play into which races might be in which geographical reasons, meaning some amount of segregating by race can't be deliberate at the individual level, and correlation doesn't equal cause. All of that isn't to say racism isn't a thing, but I don't think it reaches to the length that Christian Rudder or the interviewers sort of implied in some of these videos.
I don't think my comment implied surprise, but nearly the opposite.There's ALL KINDS of inequalities and a lot of areas in which people have trouble empathizing with each other.
I mean, example:
From a purely logical/strategic time-and-energy management perspective, it makes sense for heterosexual men using tinder to "like" every profile and not spend time reading the profiles of women who aren't going to like them back, given the low response rates and the fact that something like 80% of female profiles are fake/spam. It also makes sense to send generic messages like "Hey, how's it going?" etc. just to verify that the person is a human being first, or to copy/paste a funny line that appeals to the sensibilities of the sender.
On OKC, one charming, fairly intellectual male can be having one, maybe two or three meaningful conversations with females, they can all hit it off fairly well, and each of them can disappear inexplicably because each is having five to ten conversations and reaps the benefits of selectivity.
There's the fact that historically, males = aggressive, and females = selective, and then there's the fact that socially/culturally, we've interpreted that and foisted it upon ourselves as an expectation. And there's all kinds of ugliness that comes out of it. Reproductive strategies and human nature.
+It's Jess Christian Rudder did find that people who are a racial blend ( mixed) of black and white. including mixed race part black part white women get pretty decent ratings as a group but men tend to rate one race black women as less attractive although I am sure that there are some one race black women who most men rate high. This is just generally speaking.
Big Think... Paragraph 3 of the transcription in the description, 'They're attractiveness rating', hm? Oh dear oh dear.
"You see that in general women's opinions of men's looks is about half of what men's opinions of women's looks are so they kind of get a 50 percent discount just ice cold."
What does this mean? That looks only matter half as much to women as they do to men? Or that women find men on average 50% less attractive than men find women? This isn't very clear. :(
I'm pretty sure he means the second one. Women rate men as 50% less attractive on average when compared to how men rate women. So, the average rating for men might be a 3, while the average rating for a women is 6. Not completely sure on this however...
ghudner But you see soooo many pretty girls with meh guys and soooo little meh girls with hot guys that I would've assumed it was the other way around. Then again, I'm not sure either!
FYTJ Then again, if women do get 4 times more messages than men it would make sense if they were more picky about looks.
That explains peacocks. The men try to look as color full as possible.
FYTJ The former as another study found that women found 80% of men there less than average looking in the attraction scale. Only 20% of men were average or better.
Which is actually pretty accurate considering on what percentage our population originates from. 80% of women reproducing with 40% of men are our ancestors. After all, one woman is worth over 100 men but what can you do, that is biology for you.
so the numbers confirm what most people already know: that it's best to just stay away from online dating.
I am amazed to find that apparently only one other person in this comments thread has thought to debate how ethical it is for the people running dating sites to harvest people's data. And no one thought to take him up on it or offer similar objections. Has anyone truly thought about the wider implications of what he is saying? Why are we allowing ourselves to be herded, tagged and analysed like cattle?
I don't know if you've looked at their terms of service, specifically their privacy policy, but they tell you upfront that they will use your information to perform research and analysis and of course tailor ads based on your interests. This is all information that people surrender to them by accepting their terms of service upon creating an account. If people are truly concerned with how ethically these dating sites operate, they should read the terms of service before making accounts to such sites.
I think it's a matter of how many shots of tequila you've had.
for example:
shot #1. you might say. "Hi, nice to meet you!
shot #2. Well hello there.
shot #3 Hey, are you a model or something.
shot #4 my friend over there says that umm, you said that, ummm..oh forget it.
shot #5 a gah sha baga lift home, I um forgot how to tie my shoes.
It's human nature.
I don't really understand what he means with discount
dictionary.reference.com/browse/discount
5. to leave out of account; disregard:
Even if we discount the irrelevant material, the thesis remains mediocre.
oh right, thanks
What did i just watch? I don't know if i approve this message yet. I want discounts!
No, no you don't. That's not the "discount" you're thinking of.
1st I'm glad I wasn't the only 1 finding this presentation Confusing. I Thought it might be because I'm British. Is he saying that most people find black skin attractive & black skinned folk get the most attention from both same coloured skin & all other skin coloured folk... And that the fact that this is true is sad? Cause that's what he seemed to say as I understood it.
& another thing: From reading the comments some of you actually seem to comprehend the style of chatter Christian is presenting. So for interest sake would you say he is using usual US speak or the 'in' industry speak?
I'd say.. NOTHING. Period.
Well that was depressing...
I heard a lot of 75%s.
For what I think online dating is totally useless
1:06
Can someone explain what he is trying to say at this point with the 'discounts' thing. I found this guy to be pretty confusing during his whole speech. Jumping around a lot and using odd technical terms
5. to leave out of account; disregard:
Even if we discount the irrelevant material, the thesis remains mediocre.
Sorrowdusk
I think I understand the language, I just don't understand what his point is.
brod2man
One thing to take away from this is that women (at least on these websites) are more judgmental, and despite being made up of what might seem to be "progressive" people, most of them prefer their own race (with peoples preference for Asian women being an exception).
I'm upset, by the comments here. I expected people sign up to Big Think better than this.
Was anyone else confused by this video?
@ 1:29 "I can't prove this, it's my intuition"
Seriously! what kind of science is that?
Big Think, please improve your publishing standards.
That also didn't apply to all of his statements, only that specific one. It is also nice to have someone admit the pieces that are opinion and not tested as opposed to those who just spout things as fact without any rigorous testing.
Can someone please explain WTF this means?
"You see that in general women's opinions of men's looks, and again on average, is about half of what men's opinions of women's looks are so they kind of get a 50 percent discount just ice cold. On Tinder it's actually a lot more. It's something like a ten percent discount or ninety percent discount sorry the other way. They go at ten. So these environments I think, I can't prove this, my intuition is that the more sexual an environment the larger that discount from women to men."
Womens opinions of mens appearance is half of what men's opinions are. In other words if say for example Men rated about 50% of women 'attractive', then about 25% of men would be rated 'attractive' by women. It's worse on Tinder. Tinder is a hookup app, it's a more "sexual" environment than say Okcupid which is relationship based, and the gap in mens on womens opinions on appearance grows.
I would NEVER date online. I am automatically suspicious of anyone that cannot find a partner in their area. Either you are extremely unattractive, have something to hide, or your personality stinks so bad no one in your proximity would ever want you. Not one of these characteristics is desirable. I like to talk to another human being face to face, so I can judge their facial expressions, and the veracity of the information they give about themselves based on that. I'm really observant of people, I find that dating online people can feed you any bs they want. Basically, you have to take their word that they are being honest about who they are.
You are judgemental.
You are wrong. I have met people that don't meet any of those criteria and that are single. It's probably because some of people are shy (I am talking mostly about men here because they are supposed to make the first move, at least in my country) or because they just don't find anything special in those around them. Personally, I have met quite some girls that are my type, but those either had crap personalities (or even too less in common) or I just didn't get the chance. But that's only my situation because girls in my country are mostly very nerdy or kinda slutty with shitty personality. The girls that are really worth (mostly personality wise) are extremely rare and if you miss the opportunity, you may not get another one in quite some while.
Or, in my case, I have no areas where I can naturally meet women my age. I am 24, I work a night job. Where am I going to meet girls at? The supermarket? Please...
I despise clubs and bars, and that's not where you meet long-term girls at.
Did the people on these online dating sites know that you would be looking at all their messages? Isn't that an invasion of privacy?
Here's some that may shock you, but shouldn't. Literally nothing you put on the internet is private, nothing.
You also agree to a EULA any time you use a site like theirs, read it some time.
Yes, but how did this guy get the go ahead to do this legally? Couldn't someone sue him?
Thomas Smith are you an idiot?
Methane Construdle No, but I'm talking to one.
you must be rich as hell with your expensive subscription fees
Im a straight guy, i think women get to much flack for the "looks discount" that he talks about, just create a profile and look at the men in your own age range and its not like there are the genetic winners on okcupid. I rarely see any guy over a 6/10 in looks.
It's all so obvious 8 years later, nowadays even redditors know about hypergamy xD
So women gets more attention, men cares more about looks, and Black/Asian men gets the short end of the reply stick.
Is this supposed to be anything new or insightful?
its a sad day for humanity that we have to come to a point of looking to the internet to find love as opposed to getting outside and meeting people the old natural way!
Nothing new.Everything here is expected.
The attractiveness rating and number of replies for black people and Asian men is 3/4 of that of white people (or Latino people) on OkCupid, despite its user base being pretty liberal. I'd say it's worth watching the video for that alone.
RGtsa Well it depends. I would wager this is more illustrative of how we form our sexuality. If it is true that we form a lot of our sexuality from what we are exposed to in childhood and early adolescence then it stands to reason that a majority white user base would have a sexual preference for other white users. This could partly explain the racial disparity between responses. Obviously not the only factor but a significant one I would imagine.
***** What toupee?
The Bandog
What about it? Asian women are mostly white and they are adoooorable.
LambdaQuarks Asian men are adorable too. (not an asian guy, just to point it out.)
dude seriously, ive had this 5 minute video up for 2 weeks and ive tried to watch it about 7 times..... this guy really sucks at talking. he forces you to not pay attention!
OKCupid is kind of a crap site to begin with. Maybe if women didn't have to wade through hundreds of offensive/gross/creepy etc. messages they could actually pick out the genuine guys.
So the write up at least (I don't want to watch the annoying video, sorry) starts of talking about dating patterns and relationships and then guy goes onto two paragraphs about some race crap. Turns it into some race thing. So what, white people are attracted to other white people more, big deal, so sorry (not really sorry) but that's not racism and it's normal. It's attraction. I don't find midgets attractive, I don't hate on midgets though. I don't find black women on average attractive ( if at all it's so rare) but I am not racist.
+LambdaQuarks Actually in other interviews, Christian Rudder has said that he is not in anyway saying not being attracted to a certain race is racist. He says that a person cannot control who they are attracted to but what he meant is that there is a racial standard of beauty. He did find when he looked at racially mixed part black part white women that men of a variety of races rated racially mixed part black part white women pretty high as a group. This is in his book 'Dataclysm' in the section on racial blends.
Ughhh, this type of pseudoscience is rotting our brains! Start with a janky data set and a Liberal worldview and then use that data set to show how everything you believe is true and depressing and then pretend to be sad about it while not actually caring. I'm sure he'll make tons of money on his book selling it to people that already agree with him and want to read more things that back up their own ideas.
Online dating is a joke
Ummm you’re existing toxic masculinity