David Gelles investigates the algorithm behind Match.com, which distinguishes "expressed ideals" from "actual desires" to account for human dissonance:
For example, if conservative users were actually looking at profiles of liberals, the algorithm would learn from that and recommend more liberal users to them. Indeed, says [Amarnath] Thombre, “the politics one is quite interesting. Conservatives are far more open to reaching out to someone with a different point of view than a liberal is.” That is, when it comes to looking for love, conservatives are more open-minded than liberals.
Reihan observes:
But of course conservatives are more likely to be men than liberals, and men as a general rule will, ahem, entertain the idea of entering into a romantic relationship with a, um, wider range of movement-enabled beings than women.
Translation: If her boobs are big enough, who cares if she's a commie? He also analyzes a paper by Razib Khan that found that "Females exhibit stronger racial preferences than males." Another finding:
We also consider the effect of early exposure to other races. We ?nd marginally signi?cant evidence that those subjects that grew up in a ZIP code with a larger fraction of inhabitants of a particular race are less willing to date someone from this racial group. In other words, familiarity can decrease tolerance.
Nick Paumgarten, in his recent article centering on OK Cupid, also explores the algorithms of unstated preferences.
The Dish 