Love is Not Colorblind: An Investigation of the Racial Hierarchy of Mate Preferences

Abstract

Not my type is the usual invocation when rejecting potential lovers who don’t align with the racial hierarchy of mating preferences. The largely unchallenged norm of interracial intimacy aversion, particularly how the desire for some racial groups and rejection of others reinforces existing racial inequities, is inconsistent with the blanket notion of greater interracial acceptance. Our investigation assessed the openness of monoracial and multiracial individuals to form interracial romantic relationships. We partially replicated an interracial mate preference known as the Multiracial Dividend Effect, finding that most monoracial groups equally preferred same-race lovers and interracially dating multiracials, and they preferred interracially dating someone multiracial over any monoracial group, whereas Multiracials were more open to interracially dating any monoracial group than monoracials were to interracially date each other. In addition, Hispanic-White and East Asian-White multiracials were more open to interracially dating White individuals than their respective monoracial in-group members, and East Asian-White multiracials were more open to interracially dating all monoracial minority groups than monoracial East Asian participants. Finally, half-White multiracials are more likely to be in partial-racial couples (e.g., former President of the United States Barack Obama is Black-White multiracial and the former First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, is Black) whereas interminority multiracials are more likely to be in 100% interracial/non-overlapping couples (e.g., Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris is interminority Tamil Indian and Black whereas the Second Gentleman of the United States, Doug Emhoff, is White).