The dating site OKCupid released a study entitled, “Words and Politics: How your vote influences your dating profile.” The study used users who self-identified as either a liberal or a conservative, then gather data based on word usage and responses to the dating sites questions.
According to OKCupid:
This analysis was gathered from 190,000 real OkCupid profiles. These users must have joined in 2016, been from the U.S., and indicated whether they were a “liberal” or a “conservative.” On average, these users answered about 140 questions and their written essays had about 1,000 characters. We do not know the context that these words were used — only that they were mentioned in profiles.
To account for the fact that most OkCupid users identify as liberal, we determined the left-right position of each word by comparing the percentage of liberals that use that word to the percentage of conservatives that use it.
As can be expected, a lot of stereotypes about conservatives and liberals played out in user profiles. The dating site found that liberals tend to watch The Daily Show and Broad City. Many also mentioned that they listen to NPR and podcasts. Other widely used terms in liberal user profiles include vegetarian, social justice, open-minded, and Bernie Sanders.
Conservatives were more likely to use words related to their religion, such as Jesus, faith, bible, and Christian. References to guns and the military were also often used on conservative users profiles. According to OKCupid’s findings, conservatives also widely use the words gold, Atlas Shrugged, and steak.
When narrowing down the interests of users actively looking for love, the study made some interesting finds. The study found the majority of conservative users on the site who are actively seeking love, enjoy the outdoors or going to the shooting range. Other activities that conservative prefer include wineries, drugs, paintball, and spontaneous adventures. Liberals users on the site who are actively seeking love prefer museums, yoga, and crying. They also enjoy knitting, meditation, arts, and board games.
Other interesting finds from the study:
- Conservatives tend to use a different word for weapon depending upon the kind of relationship they are looing for. Users who are looking for love use the word gun, while users who are interested in sex use the word firearm.
- If a user has an interest in Frank Sinatra or John Mayer, they are likely conservative. If a user has an interest in Kendrick Lamar, they are likely liberal.
- Users that mention the world Broad City were most likely open to receiving anal sex, while users who mention the cowboys are most likely not to be open to it
- 50% of users would not date someone with opposing political view.
Click here to see the full results of the study.
