Exploring Intergenerational Attitudes in Portuguese Work Contexts Using Age Stereotypes

ABSTRACT

An age-diverse sample of Portuguese workers (n = 474) reported their preference for several stereotypical personality traits of different generations in coworkers and team leaders. The results show that, overall, middle-aged traits were preferred in both cases. Only younger or highly educated participants preferred young as much as middle-aged traits. Respondents occupying a supervising role did not differentiate among age traits. These results suggest that age discrimination levels among work peers are moderate, vary widely with sociodemographic characteristics and organizational positions, and are strongly influenced by social beliefs about the “right” age for work, the middle period.

KEYWORDS:

• Age
• work
• older workers
• stereotypes
• nonobtrusive measures

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank Shannon Jarrott and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. They also want to thank Ilda Cunha (former FPCE-UP student) for her help in the data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.