Study Says You May Have Broken Up With Your Type. Type, the term used by many of us to define the person we would like to be in a relationship is.
Type, the term used by many of us to define the person we would like to be in a relationship is. We sometimes push away people because we think that they are not our “type.” The truth is you do have a type when it comes to relationships. However, your type might be a person that you previously dated.
An examination by the social psychologists from the University of Toronto suggests that people do have a type when it comes to dating. Some people may want something that is really different from the previous partner they dated. The social psychologists used the study of a longitudinal German Family Panel to examine where about 12000 people suitable in 5 personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism).
The examiners followed their subjects for nine years, they looked at their relationships. The subjects also had to ask the people they were dating pretty uncomfortable questions, they had to ask their partners if they wouldn’t mind completing the same personality questionnaire for the purpose of the research. After everything they’ve gathered, the social psychologists had 332 people that were in at least two different relationships throughout the years.
The study found that most of the participants had two different partners that had the same traits. The social psychologists say, “The results revealed a significant degree of distinctive (different) partner similarity, suggesting that there may indeed be a unique type of person each individual ends up with.”
Yoobin Park, a student of the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Art & Science at the University of Toronto, says it’s normal that when a relationship stops people think their break up was because of the former partner’s personality. This results in the person dating someone that is different from their former partner. “Our research suggest there’s a strong tendency to nevertheless continue to date a similar personality,” says Yoobin Park.
That’s not the only mind-blowing part of the study. The partners’ personalities may also be close to your personality too. The study found that the personalities of the participants’ partners were also aligned to the personalities of the participants. Yoobin says if a person feels as if they are having the same problem with every partner, they might want to think that they are being pulled by the same personality traits.
by Alexandra Ramaite
