Why Does Person-Culture Fit Benefit Psychological Health? A Comprehensive Test of Competing Explanations

Research question/goal: 

Person-culture (PC) fit is the match or similarity between a person and their culture. PC fit benefits psychological health according to much research in psychology and sociology. It is utterly unclear, however, why PC fit confers those benefits. Stated otherwise, research is lacking on the psychological mechanisms that drive the effect of PC fit on psychological health. This project provides a much-needed empirical test of those psychological mechanisms. To this end, the project utilizes experiments, experience sampling, and cross-cultural panel studies. The project is timely because it furthers the basic understanding of PC fit – a key concept in psychology and sociology alike. The project is also timely because it carries implications for pressing societal challenges—namely, pursuing PC fit/escaping PC misfit is a major source of migration.

Current stage: 

The project has only started recently, and the project team is currently preparing a grant proposal for the German Research Foundation (DFG). The next steps are to conduct additional literature reviews to refine the theoretical assumptions and to specify the methodological setup of the planned studies. Following this, the writing of the grant proposal will be finalised.

Fact sheet

Funding: 
MZES
Duration: 
2020 to 2024
Status: 
discontinued
Data Sources: 
laboratory experiments, experience sampling, cross-cultural panel studies
Geographic Space: 
worldwide, primarily Germany

Publications

Journal Articles

Gebauer, Jochen E., Jennifer Eck, Theresa M. Entringer, Wiebke Bleidorn, Peter Jason Rentfrow, Jeff Potter and Samuel D. Gosling (2020): The well-being benefits of person-culture match are contingent on basic personality traits. Psychological Science, 31, issue 10, pp. 1283-1293. more