Racial preferences in dating apps: an experimental approach

Dating apps can amplify the number and diversity of our potential dates while also enabling us to filter and choose people who are more similar to us. Homogamous preferences and rooted problems like sexual racism can lead users to maintain or even reify a racialized sexual hierarchy that privileges Whiteness. Whether dating apps help build a more racially diverse world or reinforce discrimination is an open question. This study contributes to this debate by analyzing the racial preferences of thousands of users of Tinder, one of the most popular dating apps worldwide. Through a field experiment that displays (otherwise equivalent) female and male Black and White profiles, we compared the choices of people looking for heterosexual and same-gender relationships. The results show that respondents in all groups favor White profiles. Even though previous research sustains that same-gender couples are less racially homogamous, this was not confirmed in this experiment. In fact, the most surprising finding is that the preference for White partners is relatively stronger for lesbian women. However, when predicting the likelihood of a profile being liked, gender and sexual orientation are far more decisive than race. These findings support the need for an intersectional approach toward race, sexual orientation, and gender and to keep studying the effects of dating app use on mating outcomes.