Everybody lives somewhere, some people live on the beach while others might reside on a farm. Some people even move around from a farm to a beach or from a beach to farm. There are many reasons for why people want to move around, a few reasons can be education, job relocation or wanting to live in a new environment. The principle of person-environment fit is another reason some people might move around if they have the opportunity to do so.
A person-environment fit is a fit between a person and the place that they live in (Gruman, 2016). This can mean that if a cowboy moves to the big city, then it might not be a great fit because then the cowboy would have no horses to ride and cows to milk. It’s important for a person to have a good person-environment fit so that they are positively interacting with their environment and not negatively impacted.
When I was eight years old I moved from Atlanta, Georgia to Cincinnati, Ohio. This was the first big move of my life and I thought that I would not like living in Ohio because it was not what I was used to. When I got there I realized that Ohio was very familiar to the town that I grew up in in Georgia. They were both suburbs and had friendly people living in them.
I would say that this move was a good person-environment fit for me because I was not shocked by the novelty of a new but similar suburban town. I had a lot of fun living there and did not experience any sensory overload because my living conditions were extremely similar to the conditions that I was used to back home (Gruma, 2016).
I then moved twice after that and experienced different things and got to personally test my person-environment fit in four different locations. I have lived in a few places where I feel as though my individuality did not fit in with the environment and so I was able to leave to find a better environment. I am lucky to have the opportunity to leave an environment because many individuals who experience a negative person-environment fit are forced to stay in that negative environment due to extending circumstances such as family obligations or monetary restrictions.
Applied Social Psychology : Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Jamie A. Gruman, Frank W. Schneider, and Larry M. Coutts . SAGE Publications . 2016
Hi,
It seems like you adjust quite well that every move you made in your life left you with a good memory! But as you mentioned, not everyone has the privilege to leave for a new place if they feel like they don’t fit in the old one. You are indeed a lucky person! You got me interested in this topic, so I googled a bit more about the person-environment (PE) fit theory, which turns out to be “a prominent theme in the field of industrial and organizational psychology.” I am about to take a course in I/O psychology in the fall, so now I feel like I cannot wait to learn more about I/O psychology! Thank you for sharing your story and this PE theory!
Kristof-Brown, A., & Guay, R. P. (2011). Person–environment fit. In S. Zedeck (Ed.), APA handbook of industrial and organizational psychology, Vol. 3. Maintaining, expanding, and contracting the organization (pp. 3–50). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/12171-001