It's official: White men don't have a preference for Asian women - any race will do

White men do not have a fetish for Asian women. In fact, the two sides of the gender and racial divide have no special preferences for each other. This is the conclusion of a forthcoming two-year study in the Review of Economic Studies, which also claims to explain why they are also the most common form of interracial dating and marriages.

Two US economists and two psychologists ran an experiment with more than 400 dating partners over two years at a bar outside Columbia University, New York, and found some stereotypes hold, but for reasons other than what most people assumed them to be. 'For a couple of years at a local bar just off the Columbia campus, I ran a speed-dating experiment with two psychologists, Sheena Iyengar and Itamar Simonson, and fellow economist Emir Kamenica,' said Ray Fisman, of Columbia University. 'Some of our findings confirm well-worn cliches. But others surprised us.'

Speed dating involves matchmaking limited to four minutes for the participants to size each other up. In the study, participants decided after each 'date' whether they'd like to see their partners again by rating their intelligence, looks and ambition. Each event had between 10 and 20 daters of each gender, and in the course of the evening, every man met every woman and vice versa. The experiment excluded homosexual couples, unfortunately, which might have made the study more interesting.

After two years, some definite patterns emerged. Women do prefer brains and ambition while men mostly focus on looks - no surprises there. But then, women reveal a strong preference for men of their own race; East Asian women therefore prefer East Asian men. Male preferences, however, are far less racial; they almost never discriminate on race when choosing a partner. There is no evidence, the researchers conclude, of the stereotype of a white male preference for East Asian women.

However, East Asian women tend to discriminate less against white men than black and Hispanic males. As a result, the white man-Asian woman partnering is the most common interracial dating.

The authors didn't say if they participated in the experiment. The study was partly financed by the US National Science Foundation; not bad to get paid for visiting a bar for two years and arranging dates. And why is it an economic study? But of course we don't intend to raise doubt about the scientific validity of this obviously serious and important study.