Material from the paper: The well-being benefits of person-culture match are contingent on basic personality traits

People enjoy well-being benefits if their personal characteristics match those of their culture. This person-culture match effect is integral to many psychological theories and—as a driver of migration—carries much societal relevance. But do people differ in the degree to which person-culture match confers well-being benefits? In the first-ever empirical test of that question, we examine whether the person-culture match effect is moderated by basic personality traits—Big Two and Big Five. We rely on self-reports from 2,672,820 people across 102 countries and informant-reports from 850,877 people across 61 countries. Communion, A(greeableness), and N(euroticism) exacerbated the person-culture match effect, whereas Agency, O(penness), E(xtraversion), and C(onscientiousness) diminished it. Non-communal agentics evidenced no well-being benefits from person-culture match and disagreeable, neurotic OECs even evidenced well-being costs. Those results have implications for theories building on the person-culture match effect, illuminate the mechanisms driving that effect, and help explain failures to replicate it.