The youth of today: The effect of ageists prescriptive stereotypes on justice perceptions

• Autor(a) principal: Marinha, Marta Nunes
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/26949
• topic: Ageism; Stereotypes; Organizações -- Organizations; Distributive justice; Idadismo; Estereótipo; Justiça distributiva

Ageism is recognized as a prominent negative attitude, but has been primarily focused on descriptive stereotypes of older people. Instead, we investigated prescriptive stereotypes (should-based expectations) towards younger workers. Adherence to a prescriptive stereotype is perceived positively, whereas violation is perceived negatively. It can also impact perceptions of justice, with members of discriminated groups reporting unfair treatment. The primary goal of this study was to examine the effect of workers violating or adhering to ageist prescriptive stereotypes on distributive justice perceptions. For this, participants (N= 357) read a scenario about a work situation in which the character was either a younger or older worker who either violated or adhered to a prescriptive stereotype. A negative outcome to the situation was also depicted in the scenario. The results showed no significant effect of either the character age (i.e., young, or old) or behaviour (i.e., adherence or violation) on distributive justice perceptions. Additional analyses revealed that the participants' own age was a moderator of the relation between character’s behaviour and age on distributive justice perceptions. Younger participants considered the scenario as more unfair when the character was young and adhered to the stereotype, whereas older participants considered the scenario more unfair when the character was older and adhered to the stereotype. These findings expand on the literature of prescriptive stereotype and ingroup favouritism. Organizational policies (e.g., diversity training) that enable workers’ knowledge regarding these cognitive biases and its consequences become important to combat ageism.