Taylor Combs

What do nuclear war, grammar and beer have in common? Not much, but according to OkCupid, a popular dating site, these topics could help you learn a little more about your next date. Instead of grilling the person sitting across from you like a “Law and Order” detective, OkCupid recommends using “easy to bring up” questions where the seemingly benign answer relates to something you actually want to know. By examining their database of 275, 294 match questions, the site was able to identify patterns in how people answered (see, that statistics class is good for something after all).


Long Term Compatability

A couple’s long-term compatibility could be predicted based on how they both answered questions based about spontaneity, risk and fear. The questions that successful couples agreed upon were:

“Do you like horror movies?”
“Have you ever traveled around another country alone?”
“Wouldn’t it be fun to chuck it all and go live on a sailboat?”

If you and your current flame disagree on these questions, does it mean your relationship is doomed? No, but you might consider how compatible your personalities are.

First Date Sex

A person’s preference for beer, whether male or female, is an indicator of whether they will have sex on a first date. Based on dater’s answers to the questions about beer and sex-likelihood, 60% of people who like beer are more likely to be okay with having sex with someone they just met. Other questions/answer combos that pointed toward sex? “Assuming you were in the position to do so, would you launch nuclear weapons under any circumstances?” and “Could you imagine yourself killing someone?”

Liberal vs. Conservative

Now my two personal favorites involved politics and religion. Since both these topics can be touchy, talking about them on a first date is probably not recommended. However, huge differences of opinion could cause tension in a relationship from the start.

To figure out whether your date is more liberal or conservative, ask whether they prefer to have simple or complex people in their life. People who preferred complexity tended to be more liberal and those who preferred simplicity were more conservative.

How Religious

To snoop out your date’s thoughts on religion, ask them about their copyeditor-tendencies. People who were more concerned about grammatical errors tended to be less religious. Daters who were cool with bad spelling and grammar were more religious.

These might be a few fun tidbits, but keep in mind that these may not hold true in your life. Would you rather just straight out ask the guy, or use subtle questions to learn about your date?