Islam

Looking for love in all the wrong religions?

A month ago, OkCupid.com, a free online-dating service, looked at the profiles and match-percentages of 500,000 members based on religion and race. The match-percentages are how well people are matched based on what they have said they want in a partner, compared with what another person wants in a partner. They then compared how well people of different faiths matched, according to what users said they were looking for.

They assembled this data into a pretty nifty chart:

The green numbers show that pair match above average (site-wide average for any two people being 60%), while red numbers are below average.

Overall,  it appears that Jews and agnostics have the highest percentages of like-ability for all users of the site, which means that, when it comes to online dating, these groups are the most accepting of other religions and the most accepted by other religions on average.

Muslims and Hindu men have it rougher. These groups score the lowest in connection with other religions. Now the people at OkCupid put this best:

Now is a good time to stress that just because a group has low match percentages, even across the board, that does not mean they are bad people. It just means that they’re harder to please. The converse is also true: the above chart is not evidence that Jews or Agnostics are better than the rest of us. Just better liked. In any event, please keep in mind that each individual has designed his own matching criteria, so the poor-matching groups aren’t failing some outsider’s imposed system. Why, for example, Hindu men would match worst with Hindu women is a mystery.

Finally, the data show that Catholics get along with others better than Protestants, who are best matched with Protestants.

The site then explored how well people match based on how seriously they take their religiosity.

As you can see, the more serious you are about religion, the less likely you are to be matched with someone - even someone who is as serious about religion as you are!

All of this information proves what most religious people already know; “Can I tell you about Jesus/Muhammad/Krishna?” is a terrible pick-up line.

Tags: Christianity, dating, hinduism, Islam