S4 E22 | Missing the Love Boat: Insinuations of Racial Prejudice in Online Dating Activity

In this week's episode Mark Horowitz joins us for a discussion about potential racism revealed by online daters' preferences. In a recent published critique of a book on the subject, Mark questions the authors' claims of systematic and racially exclusionary patterns in online dating. The book was based on a large dataset and we appreciate the complexity of the process used to compile the descriptive statistics. However, we question the authors' conclusions when there are many alternative biosocial explanations. Mark and Elizabeth agree that reducing daters' discriminatory behavior to racism is not supported by the data, and is particularly ill-considered in today's polarized ideological environment.

Podcast Notes

Horowitz, M. (2023). The Dating Dupe―The Limits of Biosocially Unfriendly Sociology. Controversial Ideas, 3(2).

Curington, C. V., Lundquist, J. H., & Lin, K. H. (2021). The dating divide: Race and desire in the era of online romance. University of California Press.