Page 236 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

9. AGE DISCRIMINATION
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lacking in physical strength, and less serious and ambitious. Bassili and
Reil (1981) concluded that older people were viewed as conservative, tra­
ditional, present-oriented, and moral. Rosen and Jerdee (1976a) found that
younger employees are seen as being more productive, efficient, motivated,
capable of working under pressure, innovative, creative, and logical than
older employees. Additional studies (Rosen & Jerdee, 1976b, 1977) using
hypothetical incidents of younger and older employees depicted in iden­
tical circumstances found:
1. Older workers were seen as more rigid and resistant to change and thus
were provided with less feedback and given less opportunity to improve
their substandard performance.
2. Older workers were seen as less interested in keeping up with tech­
nological change and were less likely to be supported in a request for
training funds.
3. When an older worker's skills had grown obsolete, respondents were
much less likely to endorse sending the older employee to a company-
sponsored retraining course.

Recent research by Fiske, Cuddy, Click, & Xu (2002) showed that
compared to other groups (e.g., southerners, rich, Asians), older people
were viewed as high on warmth (tolerant, good natured, and sincere)
and low on competence (confident, independent, competitive, and intelli­
gent). Although perceptions of warmth may be an asset, the incompetence
stereotype suggests that older workers are likely to be denied workplace
opportunities.

Relational Demography

Relational demography suggests that similarity to referent others re­
sults in favorable outcomes, whereas dissimilarity results in unfavorable
outcomes. This literature is based on the similarity-attraction paradigm
(Byrne, 1971; Riordan & Shore, 1997) and social identity theory (Riordan,
2000). The similarity-attraction paradigm argues that individuals who are
similar will like each other, and hence, be more likely to treat each other
in a favorable manner. Social identity theory is based on the notion that
individuals classify themselves into social categories in ways that allow
them to maintain positive self-identities. One means of doing this is by
favoring similar others (Lemyre & Smith, 1985). Thus, old workers in old
workgroups and young workers in young workgroups should experience
more positive work outcomes than individuals in workgroups that are
dissimilar in age to the target employee.