Women Who Cheat Get the Most Messages on OKCupid

Meanwhile, men who say they are open to infidelity in their online dating profiles mostly get chastised

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Izabela Habur / Getty Images

Ladies, you’re more desirable when you’re taken, according to a recent experiment on a popular online dating site.

To prove this theory, CNET reports that Recovery.org, which provides resources to people addicted to drugs, alcohol, and sex, created 40 fake profiles (20 for men, 20 for women) with photos of real people on the free dating website OKCupid. Their locations were set to Oklahoma City, OK, Austin, TX, Houston, TX, Miami, FL, and Washington, D.C. — five cities that supposedly have the most unfaithful partners, according to AshleyMadison.com, which connects cheaters with each other.

(MORE: Insta-date: New Dating App Makes Blind Dates a Snap)

Each profile had the usual descriptions about work and hobbies and personality traits, but slipped in key lines that implied a willingness to partake in infidelity. In addition to a control group of “The Sincerely Singles,” users who generally wanted to meet “Mr. or Ms. Right,” ten were what Recovery.org called “The Married Maybes,” in which the user said he or she was married, but open to ending the marriage if something better came along. Another ten were called “The Recently Taken,” users who wrote that they just started dating someone on the site, but still maintained a profile. And the next ten were known as “The Brazen Cheats,” users who blatantly said they are seeing someone but want to meet new people without their partners knowing about it.

(MORE: OKCupid Study: Twitter Users Have Shorter Relationships)

After a week, “The Brazen Cheats” female profiles received the most messages — 366 compared to 129 in “The Married Maybes,” 89 in “The Recently Taken,” and 262 in “The Sincerely Singles,” the control group.

Though the male profiles received dramatically fewer responses, “The Brazen Cheats” male profiles also received more than any of the other categories — 44 compared to 18 in “The Recently Taken,” 6 in “The Married Maybes” and 15 in “The Sincerely Singles” categories. Male profiles only received 10 percent of the messages that were sent to these profiles — and 82 percent of the messages to “The Brazen Cheats” chastised the male users for suggesting they would cheat at all.

As the masterminds behind the experiment concluded: “I think a large part of why there was such a difference between the men’s and women’s numbers has something to do with the most common reasons men and women are on dating sites, many more men that women are on them just for sex.”

See the full infographic of “To Catch a Cheat” test below:

via Recovery.org