Age Stereotyping at Work: The Role of Rater and Contextual Factors on Evaluations of Job Applicants

Abstract

Using refinements of hypotheses by L. M. Finkelstein, M. J. Burke, and N. S. Raju (1995), the authors examined the effects of rater age, age salience, and job-relevant information on 324 managers' ratings of an older or a younger hypothetical applicant's interpersonal skills, economic worth, and likelihood of being interviewed. They hypothesized that age identity would interact with age salience to produce ingroup biases that would lead raters to favor workers from their own age groups. There was a main effect of target age on all dependent variables, with the strongest effects on the ratings of economic worth: The participants rated the older target as less economically beneficial than the younger target. When age was highly salient and when the raters identified psychologically with their age groups, older raters actually disfavored older workers in ratings of economic worth. The authors also discuss directions of future research into the roles of the target's economic worth and the rater's age identity in age stereotyping and age discrimination in employment decisions.