What Pulls Us Apart

In this part of the book, Rudder discusses about things that differentiate each individual from another and different perspective of different individuals. A few topics discussed in this section are the perception of attractiveness based on race and the value placed on attractiveness.

From OKCupid’s user data, Rudder is able to recognize interesting patterns of how each race rates another one in terms of attractiveness. One example is Asian men view Asian women 18% more attractive than women of another race. Another example is White men view white women 11% more attractive than women of another race. The rate of attractiveness perceived by women towards men of other races can be observed through the matrix presented below:

 

The matrices shown above also contain data from other online dating sites such as Match.com and DateHookup. The data show that the preferences are pretty similar across online dating sites. The general trend is people find someone in the same racial group more attractive. Women in general have a stronger sense of attraction than men to someone who have the same race.  There is also a trend showing that black women tend be unappreciated by non-black male users. Similarly, Asian men tend to be unappreciated by non-Asian female users. Moreover, the data shows that women of all races develop a secondary preference towards white males.

Also related to attractiveness, Rudder found that attractiveness is an important quality to have for both men and women. Research by Daniel Hamermesh, a Professor of Economics at the University of Texas-Austin, has demonstrated that being attractive helps you earn more money. The research findings indicate that an American worker who was among the bottom one seventh in attractiveness earned 10-15% less a year than an individual who ranks top third in attractiveness. If accumulated over a long time period, the difference in earnings can grow up to $230,000 (Hamermesh, 2011). Furthermore, Rudder’s analysis indicates that attractiveness is more important for women than for men. Attractive female users of OKCupid received significantly more messages than less attractive women. Attractive male users of OKCupid also receive more messages but the difference between attractive men and less attractive men us less pronounced.

The power of attractiveness is also revealed when OKCupid decided to increase the size of its users’ profile pictures. After the change took place, there was an increase in the incoming message volume for more attractive people and a decrease in incoming message volume for less attractive people. This case illustrates how the inequality gap increases as personal photos stand out more online. Rudder believes that the more photo-centric culture in the internet and the abundance of personal photos online makes attractiveness an even more desirable trait.