A researcher at UC-San Diego has discovered that racial barriers can be overcome online. Kevin Lewis studied 126,134 heterosexual individuals on OkCupid.com who self-identify as Black, White, Asian, Hispanic/Latino and Indian.

Lewis discovered that race still plays a major in role in determining how people interact online. He discovered the most people still make contact with members of their own racial background. However, he also discovered that people are more likely to respond to a cross-race overture than earlier studies would suggest. Also, once an individual has responded to a person from a different race, he or she is more likely to initiate a cross-race overture in the future.

To tendency to initiate contact within one’s own race was greatest among Asians and Indians. However, the most noticeable “reversals” are found among groups that reveal that most bent towards in-group bias.

The researchers call this “pre-emptive discrimination.”

“Based on a lifetime of experiences in a racist and racially segregated society, people anticipate discrimination on the part of a potential recipient and are largely unwilling to reach out in the first place. But if a person of another race expresses interest in them first, their assumptions are falsified—and they are more willing to take a chance on people of that race in the future,” Lewis posited.

Unfortunately, he found that a lot of people slip back into their old in-group bias after only a week.

“The new-found optimism is quickly overwhelmed by the status quo, by the normal state of affairs,” Lewis added. “Racial bias in assortative mating is a robust and ubiquitous social phenomenon, and one that is difficult to surmount even with small steps in the right direction. We still have a long way to go.”

The study’s results were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.