At least among college kids in California:
A new study of university undergraduates in California found students engaged in interracial dating gave their partners higher ratings for attractiveness and intelligence than did their peers who were seeing someone of their own race. A research team led by psychologist Karen Wu of the University of California-Irvine, reports these positive evaluations were persuasively communicated to their partners, and – at least on a level of physical attractiveness – were not illusory.
“We hypothesized that because interracial daters face social biases, their partners would have to possess higher levels of (certain) positive attributes to offset the costs of these biases,” the researchers write in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Their results indicate that may indeed be the case. … For the final study, independent raters assessed the attractiveness of the individual members of 101 couples. “Interracial daters were rated as more physically attractive,” the researchers write.
Isn’t the exotic often erotic? It seems to me that one of the biggest advantages of living in a racially diverse society is that sexual life can be more adventurous and, with differing cultures, also mind-expanding. I think of the 21st Century as the era of the miscegenation nation – with Obama its early symbolic product.
The Dish 