How Perceptions of Person-Environment Fit are Formed and Why They Change Over Time: A Within-Person Test of Competing Perspectives

The longstanding assumption in Person-Environment (PE) fit research has been that perceived fit embodies the subjectively experienced match between person and environment, and hence triggers affect and behavior (i.e., normal causation perspective). This argument is however increasingly debated, with some scholars suggesting that the causal flow may also run from affect and behavior to perceived fit (i.e., reverse causation perspective), and others even arguing that perceptions of fit are not substantially different from how people feel and think about their environment (i.e., correlational perspective). In this study, it is proposed that these three competing perspectives build on different assumptions regarding how fit judgements are cognitively formed (i.e., by means of comparative reasoning, logical deduction, or heuristic thinking), which in turn has important implications for understanding change in perceived fit. We empirically validate these competing perspectives by teasing out the causal ordering of the within-person relationships between perceptions of fit and workplace affect and performance. In two diary studies, support was found for heuristic thinking as the main process. This study contributes to the PE fit literature by providing insight into what factors relate to individuals’ perceptions of fit and how and why these fit perceptions change over timestatus: publishe