Analyzing the interactions of online daters revealed interesting patterns relating to race, according to a series of new studies published this week, USA Today reported.
"I'm showing that racial boundaries are being crossed and are more permeable than we once thought," said UC San Diego's Kevin Lewis, who led one of the studies. "There's a high degree of segregation by race. It's part of the reason people don't initiate across racial lines."
According to Lewis, online daters stay within their own race because they fear rejection - not because they aren't interested.
When users receive interest from members of another race (acts which are typically quicker and clearer in the online world), they are more likely to respond than even they would predict and more likely to initiate contact with members of the same different race. For example, if a white male shows interest in an Asian female, the Asian female will be more likely to initiate online contact with other white males, though she won't be any more likely to initiate contact with other racial groups.
"It's not that people's levels of prejudice are changing; people are avoiding others from a different racial background because they think those other people won't be interested," Lewis said. "Receiving an interracial contact and replying to it makes you send over twice as many new interracial messages in the short-term future than you would have otherwise."
Lewis found that whites were the most likely and Asians the least likely to online date other racial groups, USA Today reported.
The weaker in-race contact among whites can mostly be attributed to heterosexual white males and lesbian white women, according to a related study by Sociologist Jennifer Lundquist of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Her research found those two groups were the most likely to interact with other racial groups online while heterosexual white women and gay white men were the least likely, USA Today reported.
White users most often received responses back while Black online users were the most often ignored, according to USA Today. "Black women are the most penalized of any online dating group," Lundquist said, meaning online daters were the least likely to initiate contact and/or respond to black women.
Because racial groups are not willing to date outside members to the same degree, the example of the Asian lady who reaches out to white men after initially being contacted by a white male may not last beyond a week, according to Lewis.
"Once people go out and start initiating ties across racial boundaries, the odds of getting a reply are still relatively small. No one likes rejection," he said. "These cross-race interactions are still by far the exception to the norm. People go out and have this newfound optimism about interracial messaging, and all of a sudden, no one replies. People revert to their prior habits."
Josh Fischer, whose site AYI.com aka "Are You Interested?" ran a third study analyzing online dater's racial interactions, provided a summary of the current research and hinted that it could be used to increase the effectiveness and profitability of dating sites.
"The big thing we're learning is the difference between stated preference and actual behavior, and that's a big deal - both as a business and someone interested in human behavior," Fischer said.
