Vaughan-Johnston Thomas, Imtiaz Faizan, Lee Albert, Ji Li-Jun
Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada.
Department of Psychology, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2021 Sep 17;12:703831. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.703831. eCollection 2021.
In most countries around the world, the population is rapidly aging. A by-product of these demographic shifts is that older adults will likely occupy more positions of power and influence in our societies than ever before. Further, cultural differences might shape how these transitions unfold around the globe. Across two studies, we investigated whether business and political leaders differed in age across various cultures. Study 1 ( = 1,034) showed that business leaders were significantly older in Eastern (e.g., China, India, and Japan) cultures than Western (e.g., United States, Sweden, and United Kingdom) cultures, even while controlling for population structure (e.g., percentage of elderly in the society), gross domestic product (GDP), and wealth distribution across the population (GINI). Study 2 ( = 1,268) conceptually replicated these findings by showing that political leaders were once again older in Eastern vs. Western cultures. Furthermore, cultural tightness mediated the relationship between culture and older leadership. These findings highlight how cultural differences impact not only our preferences, but also important outcomes in consequential domains such as business and politics. Potential explanations for why cultural tightness may be related to differences in leader age across cultures are discussed. To build on these findings, future research should assess the potential causal mechanisms underlying the cultural effect on leader age, and explore the various practical implications of this effect.
在世界上大多数国家，人口正在迅速老龄化。这些人口结构变化的一个副产品是，老年人在我们社会中可能会占据比以往任何时候都更多的权力和有影响力的职位。此外，文化差异可能会影响全球范围内这些转变的展开方式。在两项研究中，我们调查了不同文化背景下商业领袖和政治领袖的年龄是否存在差异。研究1（样本量n = 1034）表明，即使在控制了人口结构（例如社会中老年人的百分比）、国内生产总值（GDP）和人口财富分配（基尼系数）之后，东方（例如中国、印度和日本）文化中的商业领袖仍比西方（例如美国、瑞典和英国）文化中的商业领袖年龄显著更大。研究2（样本量n = 1268）通过表明政治领袖在东方文化与西方文化中同样年龄更大，从概念上重复了这些发现。此外，文化紧密性调节了文化与老年领导力之间的关系。这些发现凸显了文化差异不仅如何影响我们的偏好，还影响商业和政治等重要领域的重要结果。文中讨论了文化紧密性为何可能与不同文化中领袖年龄差异相关的潜在解释。为了基于这些发现进一步研究，未来的研究应该评估文化对领袖年龄影响背后的潜在因果机制，并探索这种影响的各种实际意义。
