On person-community fit: Trait-, person-, and type-based approaches to measurement
Kevin Lanning, Geoffrey Wetherell, Gwendolyn Gardiner, Sara J Weston, David M Condon
*Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology*
Abstract
Person-community fit is a timely and important concept in personality, social, and geographical psychology. The assessment of person-community fit poses statistical and conceptual challenges because there is inevitably greater variability among individuals than there is among communities. Leveraging data from the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment project involving 75,705 individuals across the US, we investigated the impact of fit on education, health, and well-being. We first assessed fit using variable-centered (response surface analysis) and person-centered (profile similarity) approaches. We then introduced a typological approach to person-community fit which is predicated on the idea that communities, like persons, are diverse, and can include multiple social and environmental niches. In this approach, persons are categorized into types, communities are described in terms of type-profiles, and fit is assessed as the proportion of people in the community sharing one's type. Using a rudimentary typology based on the five-factor model, this approach revealed striking differences between communities in their type profiles. For both the profile and type approaches, we found modest associations between person-community fit and outcomes, but these effects were due primarily to normativity (person-country fit) rather than to the distinguishing characteristics of communities. Taken together, our results highlight the benefits of using a multimethod approach for conceptualizing the personality of communities and assessing person-community fit.
What we did
Person-community fit is the match between a person and the people around them. Measuring it is harder than it sounds, because people within a community vary more than communities vary from each other. We compared three approaches using data from the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment project, which included 75,705 people across the US. The first two were variable-centered (response surface analysis) and person-centered (profile similarity). The third was a typological approach, in which people are sorted into personality types, communities are described by the mix of types they contain, and fit is the proportion of a community that shares your type. We then asked how fit relates to education, health, and well-being.
What we found
Using a rudimentary typology based on the five-factor model, we found striking differences between communities in their type profiles. For both the profile and type approaches, fit was modestly associated with the outcomes. Most of that association reflected normativity, meaning person-country fit, and not what distinguishes one community from another. As we read it, resembling the typical American mattered more than resembling one’s own neighbors.
Using more than one method gave us a fuller picture of both communities and fit.
This summary is based on the published abstract.