Gioaba Irina, Krings Franciska
Department of Organizational Behavior, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of LausanneLausanne, Switzerland.
Front Psychol. 2017 May 16;8:770. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00770. eCollection 2017.
The increasingly aging population in most industrialized societies, coupled with the rather age-diverse current workforce makes discrimination against older employees a prevalent issue, especially in employment contexts. This renders research on ways for reducing this type of discrimination a particularly pressing concern. Drawing on theories of social identity and impression management, our research examines the role of impression management, aimed at refuting common older worker stereotypes, in diminishing bias against older job applicants during the job interview. The study consisted in an experimental hiring simulation conducted on a sample of 515 undergraduate students. Results show that older applicants who used impression management to contradict common older worker stereotypes were perceived as more hirable than those who did not. However, despite this positive effect, discrimination persisted: older applicants were consistently rated as less hirable than their younger counterparts when displaying the same IM behavior. Taken together, this research demonstrates that older job seekers can indeed ameliorate biased interview outcomes by engaging in impression management targeting common age stereotypes; however, it also shows that this strategy is insufficient for overcoming age discrimination entirely. The current study has important implications for theory, by expanding research on the use of impression management in mitigating age discrimination, as well as for practice, by offering older employees a hands-on strategy to reduce bias and stereotyping against them.
在大多数工业化社会中，人口老龄化日益加剧，再加上当前劳动力年龄差异较大，这使得对老年员工的歧视成为一个普遍问题，尤其是在就业环境中。这使得研究减少此类歧视的方法成为一个特别紧迫的问题。借鉴社会认同和印象管理理论，我们的研究考察了印象管理在减少求职面试中对老年求职者的偏见方面的作用，其目的是反驳对老年员工的常见刻板印象。该研究包括对515名本科生样本进行的模拟招聘实验。结果表明，运用印象管理来反驳对老年员工常见刻板印象的老年求职者，比没有这样做的求职者更有可能被录用。然而，尽管有这种积极效果，歧视仍然存在：当表现出相同的印象管理行为时，老年求职者的可录用性评级始终低于年轻求职者。综上所述，这项研究表明，老年求职者确实可以通过针对常见年龄刻板印象进行印象管理来改善有偏见的面试结果；然而，这也表明该策略不足以完全克服年龄歧视。当前的研究对理论有重要意义，它扩展了关于印象管理在减轻年龄歧视方面应用的研究，同时对实践也有重要意义，它为老年员工提供了一种减少对他们的偏见和刻板印象的实用策略。
