Files
Abstract
This study provides a neuropsychological examination of the conceptualization of perceived person–environment fit in relation to its cognitive and affective components. It addresses key challenges in the current fit literature through empirically clarifying the theoretical “black box” of how individuals cognitively compare themselves to their environment, fundamentally examining affective aspects of fit beyond correlational analysis, and exploring whether psychological and neural perspectives offer different conceptualizations of fit. Two functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, involving 62 and 41 working adults respectively, show that both lateral brain regions (associated with higher order cognition) and medial brain regions (associated with emotion processing) are activated when participants perceive fit. In addition, relational fit involves more emotion processing compared to rational fit, while misfit involves greater negative emotion processing than fit. An unexpected and illuminating finding is that perceived fit also engages social cognitive processing, related to theory of mind. As an additional part of the examination of perceived fit conceptualization, supplementary research indicates that, compared to job satisfaction, perceived fit engages more social brain regions (associated with social cognition), while job satisfaction exhibits greater activation in prefrontal cortex regions (linked to motivation and goal attainment). A third study, using a field survey with text analysis to examine the psychological processes underlying perceived fit and job satisfaction, replicates all hypothesized neurological findings from the two functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. Theoretical and managerial implications, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.