--- title: In Online Dating, Being Multiracial May Be An Advantage description: A new study finds of online dating finds that some white-minority multiracial daters are, in fact, preferred over white daters canonical: https://time.com/3951419/race-online-dating-interracial/ author: Tanya Basu article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-14T20:45:04.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:58:36.866Z article:section: Health og:title: Being Multiracial May Be An Advantage In Online Dating og:description: A new study finds of online dating finds that some white-minority multiracial daters are, in fact, preferred over white daters og:url: https://time.com/3951419/race-online-dating-interracial/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltad0b3f5534bd1f97/6986887c3bc999cd981a2b45/450772629.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5122 og:image:height: 2881 og:image:alt: Online dating og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Being Multiracial May Be An Advantage In Online Dating twitter:description: A new study finds of online dating finds that some white-minority multiracial daters are, in fact, preferred over white daters twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltad0b3f5534bd1f97/6986887c3bc999cd981a2b45/450772629.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Being Multiracial May Give You An Advantage In Online Dating > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: A 100-Year-Old Sex Therapist on Having Good Sex, Then and Now [Watch (HLS stream): A 100-Year-Old Sex Therapist on Having Good Sex, Then and Now](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uJFYIrvP.m3u8) (3:13)  _Published 2014-08-20. A practicing sex therapist in New York City, Dr. Shirley Zussman has witnessed everything from the legalization of the contraceptive birth control pill to the AIDs epidemic in the 1980s to the rise of internet porn in the new millenium._  by [Tanya Basu](https://time.com/author/tanya-basu/)  ## Tanya Basu Jul 14, 2015 8:45 PM UTC  Keyboard with red heart on button, close-up Keyboard with red heart on button, close-up Getty Images  by [Tanya Basu](https://time.com/author/tanya-basu/)  ## Tanya Basu Jul 14, 2015 8:45 PM UTC In the otherwise newfangled world of online dating, an old secret remains: All is not fair in love. This ugly truth was revealed in the book _Dataclysm_ by OkCupid co-founder Christian Rudder, released last year, which used data collected from OkCupid users. It found that while we’d like to claim we have advanced as a society beyond judging people by the color of their skin, [our habits show otherwise](http://time.com/3302251/9-ugly-truths-big-data-ok-cupid-book/). Regardless of gender, according to the book, whites are most preferred, while blacks are least preferred. Asians and Hispanics fall somewhere in between. Toss gender into the quotient, and the facts get even more uncomfortable: Asian men, black women, and black and Latino men are considered the least desirable in the dating market, but Asian and Latina women are seen as the most desirable—perhaps because of fetishization, Rudder suggested. But Rudder’s theory does not include a key, growing part of the American population: individuals who identify as multiracial. In a country where the [number of people who identify as multiracial](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/06/11/multiracial-in-america/) has grown substantially and 93% of multiracial people identify as white and black, what does dating data show about them? A forthcoming [study](https://contemporaryfamilies.org/multiracial-dating-brief-report/) from the Council on Contemporary Families, to be published in August by the _American Sociological Review_, looks at this very question. Researchers analyzed data collected between 2003 and 2010 from a major online dating website and combed through 6.7 million messages exchanged between heterosexual men and women. The researchers were looking for how often Asian-white, black-white, and Hispanic-white multiracial people received responses to messages, compared to people of one race. The three groups were the most common multiracial identifications on the site. Reciprocation, or response messages, were key to figuring out where multiracial people fell in perceived attractiveness because they were more “honest,” explains Celeste Curington from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of the authors of the study. “We look at response rate versus attractive rate because of social desirability bias,” she says, noting that being multiracial often carries an added unspoken benefit of being “exotic.” “People will be less likely to claim what they will view. The response rates are more accurate \[as a measurement\] since we can actually see what they do.” At first glance, there seems to be a remarkable advantage to being multiracial on the online dating scene. “The most surprising finding from our study is that some white-minority multiracial daters are, in fact, preferred over white daters,” the authors write in a [press release](https://contemporaryfamilies.org/multiracial-dating-brief-report/). Called the “dividend effect,” the authors found that three specific combinations were heavily favored in online dating: Asian-white women, Asian-white men, and Hispanic-white men. But beneath the superficial results that being of mixed race is advantageous remains a more complicated, race-tinged story, write the authors, who note that the study’s results do not suggest a totally even playing field. “White men and women are still less likely to respond to an individual who identifies as part black and part white than they are to a fellow white,” the authors write. And when they do respond, skin color still plays a role. “In some cases they \[the preferences for the three multiracial groups\] seem to be closely linked to a continuing partiality for lightness or whiteness,” the study notes. But being lighter skinned is not the whole story. Virginia Rutter, professor of sociology at Framingham State University, and Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College, [reviewed the results](https://contemporaryfamilies.org/multiracial-dating-brief-report/). The two warn against the takeaway that multiracial people are considered more attractive along skin color lines—a far too simple conclusion, they say. It’s not as simple as societal preference for lighter-skinned people, and future consequences have yet to be measured, according to Rutter, who says that it helps to consider the results through “the arc of time.” Only 48 years ago, the ban on marrying a person of a different race was lifted nationally, and Rutter thinks societal acceptance of mixed race couples might indicate more acceptance—or, very possibly, less. Curington, one of the study’s authors, points to the multicultural movement of the 1990s that popularized identification of a person beyond being black, white, Asian or Hispanic as a key factor, too. “After those changes came about, there was an increased representation of mixed people in general,” Curington says. “As these changes lead to a growing multiracial population, is it possible that the multiracial dividend will be extended, or at least begin to counter some of the racial penalties that have existed in the dating and marriage market?” ask Rutter and Coontz in their review. “Or will individuals perceived as mono-racial blacks fall even further behind?” What further complicates these findings more is the exoticizing of multiracial people. Pop culture tends to mark “the ethnically ambiguous” person to be attractive to either sex for their enigma and lack of clear origin, Curington says. “If you look at cultural representations of multiracial people, going back to the early 1900s, they are often portrayed as exotic and sexually wanton,” she says. But being multiracial might also act as a marker of progressiveness, particularly for Asian-American women. As Asian-American generations ground themselves in American culture and seek mates who can transcend their cultural tradition while also being able to understand their American upbringing, Asian-American women might prefer multiracial men for two reasons: First, they offer a dual upbringing that blatantly signals to Asian-American women the ability for the potential date to transcend both cultures; and second, they offer a “middle ground” of sorts for Asian parents—not quite white, and therefore more acceptable for older generations seeking to keep Asian culture intact in their offspring’s mating choice, but not quite Asian either, or having the “exotic” factor to come into play. ## Transcript Sexual pleasure is only one part of what men and women want from each other. They want intimacy, they want closeness, they want understanding, they want comfort, they want fun, and they want somebody who really cares about them beyond going to bed with them, and I think people are always seeking that. In every generation. [ MUSIC ] My name is Shirley Zussman. I just reached a hundred years of age, and I am a practicing sex therapist. I was invited with my husband to a lecture in New Jersey, in 1966. Masters and Johnson were the speakers. No body knew about them. Human sexual response had just been published, what I saw was a couple who will say that people had problems in an area in their lives that was very important and they were recognizing that it was all not just. Glamorous and wonderful to be sexual. One had to almost had to learn how to be a good partner and to endure the pleasure not only for yourself but for each other. And I thought we can do that. Why can't we do that? And we applied for training with Masters and Johnson at that time. The patients that came to us were people who read the paper. The only way they do anything about the work that was being done there. And the problems they came with, was somewhat different than the problems they come with today. Mostly, women came because would put out orgasmic, they didn't know how to achieve an orgasm, but they wanted one. It was so over that ,. Goal they had for themselves and how do I get there. That was one Masters and Johnson's contribution that there was a relatively simple way to start learning about your body. In other words, get, get to know your, who you are sexually and physically and that was. And encouragement for masturbation for learning what makes you feel good. I see a big change in the we view casual sex. In the 60's I think it was not just casual it was frantic. I'm shocked at the lack of connection with people; because of iPhones, even I love my iPhone. There is so much less actual physical connection, there's less touching, there's less talking, there's less holding, there's less looking, [ INAUDIBLE ]. People get pleasure from looking at each other. But the most common problem, I would say, in the sex therapy that I live in, is a lack of desire. You have to look at your priorities. You have to decide what is important to make you feel good about yourself and your life. And to help make your partner feel good and to establish something that is gratifying that really fills a need that we all have to be close to somebody. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3951419/race-online-dating-interracial/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3951419/race-online-dating-interracial/"},"headline":"Being Multiracial May Give You An Advantage In Online Dating","datePublished":"2015-07-14T20:45:04.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:58:36.866Z","description":"But that's hardly the whole story, recent research suggests","url":"https://time.com/3951419/race-online-dating-interracial/","keywords":["Sex/Relationships","Dating","okcupid","online dating","Race","Living","Research","health","white","Black"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltad0b3f5534bd1f97/6986887c3bc999cd981a2b45/450772629.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tanya Basu","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/tanya-basu/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltad0b3f5534bd1f97/6986887c3bc999cd981a2b45/450772629.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Online dating","caption":"Online dating","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/sexrelationships/","name":"Sex/Relationships"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3951419/race-online-dating-interracial/","name":"Being Multiracial May Give You An Advantage In Online Dating"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"A 100-Year-Old Sex Therapist on Having Good Sex, Then and Now","description":"A practicing sex therapist in New York City, Dr. Shirley Zussman has witnessed everything from the legalization of the contraceptive birth control pill to the AIDs epidemic in the 1980s to the rise of internet porn in the new millenium.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/uJFYIrvP/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-08-20T13:40:15.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uJFYIrvP.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3951419/race-online-dating-interracial/","duration":"PT3M13S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3951419/race-online-dating-interracial/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```