Effects of rater conscientiousness on evaluations of task and contextual performance of older and younger co-workers

Abstract

The possibility for age discrimination and stereotypes to affect performance evaluations is rising. Although careful evaluations might be expected from conscientious raters, little is known about whether they might show more or less bias towards certain age groups. Therefore, in our study using a time-lagged design, we investigated the effects of rater conscientiousness on the performance evaluations of younger and older actual co-worker (N = 242). We found that raters who were more conscientious provided higher ratings for older workers than for younger workers on task performance and organizational citizenship behaviours. Specifically, we tested the model of mediated moderation, in which the relation between rater conscientiousness and ratee age predicts ratee-perceived conscientiousness, which in turn predicts performance ratings. The model was significant for older ratees, but not for younger ratees. We discuss our results in terms of the “similar to me” effects and implications for organizational practices.

Keywords:

• conscientiousness
• age bias
• task performance
• organizational citizenship behaviours

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We are aware that there is no clear consensus among researchers regarding what is meant by an “older worker” or a “younger worker”(Finkelstein & Farrell, 2007), as the chronological age and occupational age might or might not exactly overlap, and individual differences may occur in the aging process (Baltes, Reese, & Lipsitt, 1980). People differ in the quality and type of experience they gain each year, as well as in the amount of cognitive and physical resources they may lose (Müller et al., 2015; Pitt-Catsouphes, Matz-Costa, & James, 2012). Finally, the age in which people enter or exit the workforce may range across few years. However, chronological age is so far the most objective parameter we could use. Therefore, being cautious about difference between chronological age and occupational age, we decided to use age ranges suggested in the previous works of Bertolino et al. (2013) and Truxillo et al. (2012). We chose to operationalize the older worker and younger worker concepts in the way that the “younger worker” age range would represent a person who is entering the workforce most recently, while the “older worker” age range would represent a person who is approaching the retirement age in the Italian context. In particular, the older age group was based on average effective age of retirement, which in the last ten years (2002–2012) was 60.6 in Italy (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2012).

2. Ibid.

3. In additional analysis we have tested the similar-to-me effect from age similarity. We used moderated hierarchical regression to test in separate steps the effect of first, the interaction between rater age and ratee age, and second, the interaction between rater conscientiousness and ratee age. We found that the interaction between rater age and ratee age was not significantly affecting any of the performance ratings. Moreover, even when we accounted for this effect of age similarity, the results for the interaction between ratee age and rater conscientiousness remained significant (β_{ratee conscientiousness} = .46, p = .01; β_{task performance} = .52, p = .02, β_OCBi = .57, p = .04, β_OCBo = .54, p = .03). This confirms that similar-to-me effects based on personality similarity might occur even if we control for direct effects of rater age and age similarity.

4. To re-test the statistically significant effects the analyses were also performed with no control variables, and the results remained significant.

5. See note 3 above.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid