Does it matter if your personality fits in with the personalities of the people where you live? The present study explored the links between person-city personality fit and self-esteem. Using data from 543,934 residents of 860 U.S. cities, we examined the extent to which the fit between individuals' Big Five personality traits and the Big Five traits of the city where they live (i.e., the prevalent traits of the city's inhabitants) predicts individuals' self-esteem. To provide a benchmark for these effects, we also estimated the degree to which the fit between person and city religiosity predicts individuals' self-esteem. The results provided a nuanced picture of the effects of person-city personality fit on self-esteem: We found significant but small effects of fit on self-esteem only for openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, rather than effects for all Big Five traits. Similar results and effect sizes were observed for religiosity. We conclude with a discussion of the relevance and limitations of this study.

Numerous studies have documented the effects of personality on health outcomes. However, which traits are most relevant to health, and the precise magnitude of their effects, is inconsistent across studies. The present study used a large sample (N=460,172) to replicate and extend the relations between the Big Five and three health-related outcomes: self-reported health, body mass index, and substance use. Low Conscientiousness predicted all outcomes, indicating that individuals who are less responsible and less self-controlled tend to report poorer health, be more overweight, and engage in more substance use. In addition, individuals who were more emotionally unstable (high Neuroticism) reported poorer health, and individuals prone to seek out social experiences and rewards (high Extraversion) engaged in more frequent substance use.

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 examined whether the person-culture match effect is moderated by basic personality traits-the Big Two and Big Five. We relied on self-reports from 2,672,820 people across 102 countries and informant reports from 850,877 people across 61 countries. Communion, agreeableness, and neuroticism exacerbated the person-culture match effect, whereas agency, openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness diminished it. People who possessed low levels of communion coupled with high levels of agency evidenced no well-being benefits from person-culture match, and people who possessed low levels of agreeableness and neuroticism coupled with high levels of openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness 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.