Positive and Negative Match Pattern: How Cultural Tightness–Looseness Recalibrates the Personality–Health Nexus Across the United States

Individual health is influenced not only by physiological factors but is also embedded within the macro-socio-cultural environment. Traditional research on the personality-health nexus has often overlooked the role of regional cultural contexts. Utilizing the 50 U.S. states as units of analysis, this study employs the Tightness-Looseness index as a proxy for regional culture, combined with state-level Big Five personality data, to examine how cultural tightness is associated with variation in personality-health links across multidimensional health outcomes. Our findings reveal two distinct moderation patterns: (1) Negative match pattern: cultural tightness is associated with stronger adverse personality-health links for neuroticism and extraversion and weaker protective links for agreeableness and conscientiousness; (2) Positive match pattern: tightness is associated with a weaker adverse health link for openness. By extending the Person-Environment Interaction perspective to the regional level, this research suggests that intra-national cultural variations may reshape the personality-health link. These results provide macro-regional evidence for Person-Culture Match theory and offer implications for the development of targeted, culture-sensitive public health interventions.