Racial Preferences In Speed Dating

The problem of battling racial discrimination persists as the differentiation between political as well as economic equality and social equality remains pronounced despite the law prohibiting discrimination. Convergence towards political and economic equality is evident, for instance, from the black-white ratio of median earnings for men (Welch, 2003). Far less convergence has yet ensued in social equality because the intimate domains could not be policed. As such, an insight into interracial matches is a vital aspect in understanding racial discrimination. In the paper, Fisman et al. (2008) investigates racial preferences in dating, and essentially, scrutinizing the traits that provoke stronger preference for a partner of identical race. Interracial

A script that is based specifically on the format of Hurry Date, the major Speed Dating company in New York was being utilized for the experiment. Participants included students from Columbia University graduate and professional schools. By employing the Speed Dating experiment, the authors could exercise experimental control and observe individual choices as a result of actual behavior, which will likely be consistent with the behavior in a real-world situation. After which, regressions were run to determine the dependent variable, Decisionij, which takes a value of one if further communication is preferred. The main results indicate strong racial preferences, with females exhibiting greater same-race preferences than males generally. In contrast, older individuals have weaker same-race preferences. Notions of attractiveness that are race-specific also do not cause such racial preferences. Next, including measures such as shared interests do not alter the results. Finally, determinants of racial preferences include the individuals’ background and the prevailing racial attitudes in the individuals’ country of

Moreover, individuals are committed to follow through their decisions, allowing examination of actual choices and the ability to characterize how people choose their partners. On the other hand, stated preference techniques are less constrained and offers the luxury of possible changes but face potential shortcomings such as the probability of hypothetical bias as respondents may not care to think about their decision because they are hypothetical. Thus, combining revealed preference and stated preference techniques will permit the benefits of both to be exploited, further improving the explanatory power of revealed preference analysis.

Stated preference technique was used in the study when the authors asked the participants in the pre-event survey about their motivation behind their participation in the Speed Dating experiment. However, since truthful revelation is a primary concern in stated preference techniques as highlighted above, self-reported age, Agei, was used instead. It has to be stressed that the results do not differ much regardless of the choice of method