Modeling Person‐Situation Correspondence over Time: A Study of 103 Evangelical Disciple‐Makers

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent Studies of person‐situation correspondence demonstrate that people actively select environments that are congruent with their personality, attitudes, motives, and goals (cf. Emmons, Diener, & Larsen, 1986). But do these individual difference variables also influence a person's propensity to remain in an environment over time? To answer this question, we administered the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; Tellegen, 1982; Tellegen & Waller, 1990) and the Age Universal I‐E scale (Gorsuch & Venable, 1983) to a sample of 103 lay‐ministers from a large, evangelical church in the upper Midwest. Subjects were participants in a church‐sponsored disciple‐making program, and our dependent variable was length of involvement as a disciple‐maker. Results indicated that the lay‐ministers endorsed an intrinsic religious orientation and had high scores on the MPQ dimensions of Control, Harmavoidance, and Traditionalism. Using survival analysis, a statistical technique for modeling event durations, we found that disciple‐makers who were both low on Aggression and Harmavoidance remained in the program for the longest period. Our findings are discussed in terms of a temporally oriented model of person‐situation correspondence.