So they say “love is blind.” Do you think so?
Well, apparently not.
In an article titled Race and attraction 2009 – 2014 by Christian Rudder (one of the founders of an online dating site, OKCupid), it was shown that Asian men and Black people get short shrift in scoring a date (no intentions to stir racist issues here, merely reporting according to statistics!).
These statistics were retrieved and compared across 25 million OKCupid account users in 2009 and 2014; however, the five-year gap that did not show much change but instead the numbers seem to have worsen, reflecting intensified racial bias when it comes to rating preference versus the average in dating.
“We judge books by their covers, and we can’t help but do it,” says Nicholas Rule of the University of Toronto in a recent research that discusses on first impressions.
So, does this mean we “love at first sight” then? Well, it may not be totally true either.
Getting to know a person is the key in leading you to put your heart into someone’s hands. There are a few stages in a relationship that you will need to go through and a nerve-wrecking-blood-rushing-pulse-sky-rocketing-heart-racing and a sea of anxiety first date is the first step.
There will be heaps of questions that you are dying to ask your date yet you do not wish to sound too interrogative, or if some questions are difficult to ask directly. Here are a few suggestions by OKCupid on the best questions for a first date that you could ask to predict your date’s personality.
Seemingly ‘shallow’ questions with an actual agenda behind it? Perfect.
The Best Questions For A First Date:
These questions were deemed of the highest quality yet least invasive after going through filtration and careful selection from a collective database of 275,294 match questions from OKCupid with 776 million responses. The fundamental question posted was “What questions are easy to bring up, yet correlate to the deeper, unspeakable, issues people actually care about?”
Is your date religious?
Ask “Do spelling and grammar mistakes annoy you?” (this question is probably an exception for Grammar Nazis). If the answer is no, meaning that mistakes are acceptable, a ratio of two to one is at least moderately religious. The data, however, did not provide information about a person who answers yes.
Does it make your date less religious? I personally do not think so.
What’s your date’s political view?
You could ask “Do you prefer the people in your life to be simple or complex?”. The explanation given is that people who prefer complexity often are liberal and likewise people who prefer simplicity are conservative. However, this data is not useful for countries with a single ideology. Besides, there could also be people who prefers simplicity yet have liberal views.
What is the long-term potential between you and your date?
You could ask “Do you like horror movies?”, “Have you ever traveled around another country alone?”, and “Wouldn’t it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?”. An agreement on these three questions correlated best to an actual relationship.
Will you be able to score a home run on your first date?
Try asking “Do you like the taste of beer?”. Reason being is that beer-lovers are 60% more likely to be okay with sleeping with someone they have just met. Whether someone likes the taste of beer is the single best predictor among all other casual topics, according to OKCupid’s blog.
However, these are just purely dating data and does not entirely portray accurately the best way to know someone. Plenty of other factors such as personality, body language, level of confidence, etc. plays an important part in a first date as well in understanding the person of your dreams. Essentially, communication is the key in all relationships, especially while you are in the getting-to-know-each-other phase. So take these tips above with a pinch of salt and use your best judgement as well!
Here is a video on dating techniques that you could take as reference:
