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Study

Study: Caucasians 9% More Likely to Meet Than Be Picked Up for First Date

Hayley Matthews

Written by: Hayley Matthews

Hayley Matthews

Hayley has over 10 years of experience overseeing content strategy, social media engagement, and article opportunities. She has also written hundreds of informational and entertaining blog posts. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Bustle, Cosmo, the Huffington Post, AskMen, and Entrepreneur. When she's not writing about dating news, relationship advice, or her fantasy love affair with Leonardo DiCaprio, she enjoys listening to The Beatles, watching Harry Potter reruns, and drinking IPAs.

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Edited by: Lillian Castro

Lillian Castro

Lillian Guevara-Castro brings more than 30 years of journalism experience to ensure DatingAdvice articles have been edited for overall clarity, accuracy, and reader engagement. She has worked at The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Gwinnett Daily News, and The Gainesville Sun covering lifestyle topics.

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Advertiser Disclosure

This is an exclusive study conducted by DatingAdvice.com, which surveyed respondents over the course of three weeks to reflect an accurate representation of the U.S. population.


You get picked up for a first date and everything seems great … until it’s not. Maybe he gets too tipsy to drive, or maybe she turns out to be obsessed with cats. Whatever the problem is, you still have to rely on this stranger to give you a ride home.

Sounds like fun, right?

These horrifying potential dates and others are why 73 percent of Americans would rather meet than be picked up for a first date.

But are there some Americans who are more likely to meet or be picked up for that first time out? We used our most recent study to figure it out.

We surveyed more than 1,000 Americans, asking different subsets of the population if they would prefer to meet a first date at a location or to be picked up from home. The results were definitely interesting.

For example, our results taught us 26 percent of men want to be picked up for a first date.

“Caucasians are 9 percent more likely

than Hispanics to meet for the first date.”

And that isn’t all we learned.

Our results show Caucasians are 9 percent more likely than Hispanics to meet for the first date. Caucasians said they preferred to meet in public 75 percent of the time, while 69 percent of Hispanics responded the same. While these responses vary, they still show an overwhelming propensity toward meeting someone in public for a first date.

We did some more digging to see what else we could find about these first date preferences.

Insight from different popular websites like DateHookup.com, NeoGAF.com and City-Data.com showed the majority of people prefer to be picked up.

Julie Spira, our online dating guru, wrote a piece about this for eHarmony.com, and she considers getting picked up to be a “first date disaster.” She highly recommends meeting in a public place and not driving together — that way, you stay safe.

The study surveyed 1,080 respondents over the course of three weeks, balancing responses by age, gender, income, race, sexuality and other factors in order to accurately represent the U.S. population. The study has a margin of error of +/- 2.8%.

The Breakdown: 

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Visit DatingAdvice.com/Studies for more research on dating and relationship topics. 

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