What Is Cultural Fit?

Abstract

How people fit into social groups is a core topic of investigation across multiple sociological subfields, including education, immigration, and organizations. In this chapter, we synthesize findings from these literatures to develop an overarching framework for conceptualizing and measuring the level of cultural fit and the dynamics of enculturation between individuals and social groups. We distinguish between the cognitive and behavioral dimensions of fitting in, which previous work has tended to either examine in isolation or to conflate. Reviewing the literature through this lens enables us to identify the strengths and limitations of unitary—that is, primarily cognitive or primarily behavioral—approaches to studying cultural fit. In contrast, we develop a theoretical framework that integrates the two perspectives and highlights the value of considering their interplay over time. We then identify promising theoretical pathways that can link the two dimensions of cultural fit. We conclude by discussing the implications of pursuing these conceptual routes for research methods and provide some illustrative examples of such work.

Proximal and distal honor fit and subjective well‐being in the Mediterranean region

“…The current research contributes to the increasing body of work on the role of honor in psychological processes in the Mediterranean region (Uskul & Cross, 2019) and the association between cultural fit and psychological outcomes (Mobasseri et al, 2019), by examining the link between individuals' cultural fit in honor values and concerns and their subjective well‐being in communities circum Mediterranean. We conceptualized honor as the endorsement of honor at the individual level and considering its multifaceted nature.…”

“…Yet, although all individuals exist within a cultural environment, they vary in the extent to which they endorse the culturally dominant ways of being and acting (Leung & Cohen, 2011). Cultural fit represents this relationship between an individual and their social environment, reflecting the “process of thinking and acting in ways that are aligned with the thoughts and behavioral expectations of members of a social group” (Mobasseri et al, 2019, p. 305). As such, it goes beyond the comparison of mere cultural prototypes or averages (see Leung & Cohen, 2011) and can offer an insightful way to examine the psychological consequences of individual variation within cultural groups.…”

Where are Managers Needed? How Culture and Coordinative Complexity Predict the Evolution of Reporting Relationships in Organizations

“…We believe this broader conceptualization and our associated measurement strategy are better suited to understanding how coordination occurs within organizations than are individual-level approaches. In similar fashion, we redefine the construct of "cultural fit," which has heretofore been conceptualized and operationalized as the extent to which a focal individual is cognitively and behaviorally aligned with such reference groups as the individual's current interlocutors, her department, and the organization as a whole (O'Reilly III et al 1991, Rivera 2012, Doyle, Goldberg, Srivastava, and Frank 2017, Mobasseri, Goldberg, and Srivastava 2019, such that it operates, and is measured, at the level of dyads rather than individuals. Finally, we introduce a novel measure of coordinative complexity, which is based on emergent patterns of communication between focal dyads and the job titles of their peers in the organization.…”

Social Values and Determinants of Cultural Fit in Quebec: The Roles of Ancestry, Linguistic Group, and Mental Health Status

“…However, this manner of defining cultural membership conflates country with culture, and might not sufficiently account for potential diversity (e.g., intersectional memberships, variations in fit) that a country’s native residents may embody (Cohen, 2009). Even when more specific definitions of cultural membership are applied, an individual may reflect their cultural group to varying degrees and in varying domains, and multiple domains are conflated in many studies (Mobasseri et al., 2017). Therefore, characterizing cultural fit within a single cultural domain, such as social values, may be useful for understanding one dimension of the relationship between country and culture.…”