Interesting OkCupid experiment

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I noticed something interesting on OkCupid. For the most part, I've had very good success on the site itself...I get responses to the majority of the messages I send, and a pretty decent portion of those lead to actual dates.

Anyways, recently I added two single words to my profile: I'm introverted. Ever since then, my response rate has fallen from close to 90% to more like 10%. It could just be a coincidence, but I think that I've racked up a decent enough sample size to say that it's made a definable impact. I guess that it makes sense, because in a pretty large portion of people's profiles, they say "I'm looking for someone outgoing". I plan to keep it in my profile, just because I'd rather be rejected sooner rather than later for something like that, but I just found it interesting how big of an effect it seems to have.

People have all sorts of weird ideas about what "introverted" means. Perhaps some of them are reading that as "shy," "socially anxious," or even "anti-social."

If you had connections, you could develop this into a large-scale research project, and publish a paper.

Hah! I have connections, but that sounds like the last thing in the world I'd want to do...I can think of far better ways to spend my time

Lol. You could help further the research world, but yeah, I understand what you're saying.

I think starkid's post is helpful. Maybe in your profile, you could expand on what "I'm introverted" means to you, and your response rate might increase.

That *is* interesting. I personally can't spend much time around extraverts, so I agree it's an important thing to know up front.

Have you ever thought of looking for profiles with keywords? You can type in introvert and see who you get. I do this often and will usually type in words like introverted, quiet, and shy and see what I get and I find more people than I thought. It wouldn't hurt to do that in case you find others who are introverted like yourself so you'll get that out of the way.

I think it's a coincidence, the number of female okc users in any specific location is very finite; don't really buy it that all of them read every word in your profile.

Have you changed your pic?

How about to try a reverse experiment?

Didn't OK Cupid do an experiment on it's members recently? I heard they paired up people randomly to see if it went as well as matching them up by similar traits. Turned out they had the same success rate.