Racial Preferences In Dating Summary
"Racial Preferences in Dating," an article by Raymond Fisman, Sheena Iyengar, Emir Kamenia, and Itamar Simonson, was published in the Review of Economic Studies in 2008. The article was written to examine racial preference in dating by using a speed dating experiment that was designed to observe the decisions of the study participants. The thing about this article which most immediately stood out was that women, older people, and more attractive people displayed weaker preferences about the race of a potential partner.
As the authors note in their introduction, interracial marriage is very rare in the United States. When one considers that nearly half of all marriages would be interracial if partners were selected at random, but less than
5% of all marriages are actually interracial, this fact becomes even more striking. I found it to be quite revealing. I found their analysis of how this state of affairs came to be quite interesting - as they note, the lack of interracial marriage could be due to the preferences of men or women and of members of any ethnic group, and that the level of resistance to interracial marriage could vary across ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. According to the authors, women have very strong preferences for partners of the same race, while men have no such preferences. I found this quite interesting in light of the idea that, historically, such things as segregation were created to make sure that white women only slept with black men.
One thing which was especially interesting is that so few studies have been done about something so important. Given that there is often a lot of opposition to interracial marriage and relationships, it would seem that more people would study it. However, as the authors note, only three other studies have been done which analyze the racial preferences of people in real life and, of those studies, none of the others try to find factors in the ethnic or socio-economic backgrounds of the participants that could have caused their views to emerge.
While I did not find it unexpected that participants who came from intolerant places were more intolerant themselves, I did find it unexpected that people who came from places with less diversity would display a higher preference for partners of a different race. However, this finding could be an artifact of the design of the study - as the authors note, the participants in the study (students at Columbia University) were, as a whole, far more educated than the average person and, in some ways, belong to a subculture (that of academia) in which such values as diversity are considered in ways that often differ radically. Additionally, study participants were aware that there would be people of other races at the speed dating event. It could easily have been the case that, had the study been conducted in a different environment, it could have found different results. For instance, it is likely that anyone who chose to live in New York City already has a significantly greater tolerance, if not preference, for that which is unusual than does someone who chooses to live in, say, Peoria. It would be interesting to see what results this study would have found had it been conducted in some perfectly average place, or even a place that 's simply ordinary.
In summary, I think that the results of this study were highly interesting. Particularly, I found it interesting that women were more intolerant of potential partners of different races than were men, and that older people were more tolerant of potential partners of different races than were younger people. Additionally, it was very interesting that more attractive people were more tolerant of partners of different races than were less attractive people. It would be interesting to read a study which examines exactly why that is the case in more detail.
References
Fisman, R., Iyengar, S., Kamenica, E., & Simonson, I. (2008). Racial Preferences In Dating. Review of Economic Studies, 117-132.
As the authors note in their introduction, interracial marriage is very rare in the United States. When one considers that nearly half of all marriages would be interracial if partners were selected at random, but less than
5% of all marriages are actually interracial, this fact becomes even more striking. I found it to be quite revealing. I found their analysis of how this state of affairs came to be quite interesting - as they note, the lack of interracial marriage could be due to the preferences of men or women and of members of any ethnic group, and that the level of resistance to interracial marriage could vary across ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. According to the authors, women have very strong preferences for partners of the same race, while men have no such preferences. I found this quite interesting in light of the idea that, historically, such things as segregation were created to make sure that white women only slept with black men.
One thing which was especially interesting is that so few studies have been done about something so important. Given that there is often a lot of opposition to interracial marriage and relationships, it would seem that more people would study it. However, as the authors note, only three other studies have been done which analyze the racial preferences of people in real life and, of those studies, none of the others try to find factors in the ethnic or socio-economic backgrounds of the participants that could have caused their views to emerge.
While I did not find it unexpected that participants who came from intolerant places were more intolerant themselves, I did find it unexpected that people who came from places with less diversity would display a higher preference for partners of a different race. However, this finding could be an artifact of the design of the study - as the authors note, the participants in the study (students at Columbia University) were, as a whole, far more educated than the average person and, in some ways, belong to a subculture (that of academia) in which such values as diversity are considered in ways that often differ radically. Additionally, study participants were aware that there would be people of other races at the speed dating event. It could easily have been the case that, had the study been conducted in a different environment, it could have found different results. For instance, it is likely that anyone who chose to live in New York City already has a significantly greater tolerance, if not preference, for that which is unusual than does someone who chooses to live in, say, Peoria. It would be interesting to see what results this study would have found had it been conducted in some perfectly average place, or even a place that 's simply ordinary.
In summary, I think that the results of this study were highly interesting. Particularly, I found it interesting that women were more intolerant of potential partners of different races than were men, and that older people were more tolerant of potential partners of different races than were younger people. Additionally, it was very interesting that more attractive people were more tolerant of partners of different races than were less attractive people. It would be interesting to read a study which examines exactly why that is the case in more detail.
References
Fisman, R., Iyengar, S., Kamenica, E., & Simonson, I. (2008). Racial Preferences In Dating. Review of Economic Studies, 117-132.