groundhogging

In February 2022 Hypebae (opens in a new window) reported research from the dating app Inner Circle, which found that “three in four people (72%) have a “type”,” and the app’s prescription: “Singles need to scrap this way of thinking and stop groundhogging.” Refinery29 (opens in a new window) carried the same figure the next day. Cambridge Dictionary (opens in a new window) entered the word in October 2023 as “the act of dating the same type of person again and again, even though it never ends in a successful relationship.” The name is the film in which one day repeats until the man living it changes.

Psychology had measured the habit before it had a name. A 2019 study (opens in a new window) followed 332 people in Germany for 9 years and compared their current and past partners’ own reports of their personalities. It found “a significant degree of distinctive partner similarity, suggesting that there may indeed be a unique type of person each individual ends up with.” The effect was weaker in people high in extraversion or openness to experience.

Under load, groundhogging is a repeat order placed after every return. The type is the specification, the specification is what failed, and the order goes out again unchanged. The app that named it prescribed a wider search, which is the product an app sells. The study suggests the specification is the more durable of the two.