Age Differences in Responses to Conflict in the Workplace

Abstract

Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) has been used successfully to explain age differences in interpersonal conflict behavior: older adults are generally less likely to engage in destructive responses, and more likely to employ nonconfrontational ones. However, this research has focused almost exclusively on conflict with intimates (spouses, family, friends), and has typically not examined conflict in the workplace. The present investigation uses behavior ratings made by bosses, peers, and subordinates of 2513 working adults to examine the association between age and workplace conflict behavior; more specifically, it tests three hypotheses generated from socioemotional selectivity theory. Consistent with predictions, raters generally agreed that older working adults were more likely to engage in nonconfrontational responses (yielding, delaying responding); also as expected, older and younger respondents did not consistently differ in their efforts to constructively solve conflict. Unexpectedly, little evidence was found that older adults engage in less active destructive behavior.

A Longitudinal Study of Age‐Related Differences in Reactions to Psychological Contract Breach

“…The interaction patterns between age and contract breach revealed that in cases of serious contract breach, in particular, job satisfaction and job performance of younger workers became lower than those of older workers. A possible explanation is that older workers are able to buffer the negative effects of contract breach by regulating their emotions in a constructive way (Davis et al., ; Ng & Feldman, ). Even though contract breaches may be strongly related to changes in job satisfaction and job performance, older workers' job satisfaction and job performance are less influenced by contract breaches than younger workers'.…”

“…Socio‐emotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, ; Carstensen & Mikels, ) and the model of emotion regulation (Gross, , ; Gross, Carstensen, Pasupathi, Tsai, Skorpen, & Hsu, ; John & Gross, ) have been used extensively in understanding how older people differ from younger people in motivation and behavior, as well as in explaining the impact of age on work behaviors (see e.g. Davis, Kraus, & Copabianco, ; Kooij, De Lange, Jansen, Kanfer, & Dikkers, ; Ng & Feldman, ).…”

When I'm 64: Psychological contract breach, work motivation and the moderating roles of future time perspective and regulatory focus

“…, but has rarely been tested in an actual work setting (cf. for few exceptions Cate & John, 2007;Davis, Kraus, & Capobianco;Zacher & Frese, 2009), and never in relation to intrinsic work motivation. According to Carstensen, Isaacowitz, and Charles (1999), the perception of reaching retirement contributes to making experiences more positive.…”

Effects of social identity salience on motivational orientation and conflict strategies in intergenerational conflict

“…Younger adults tend to prefer knowledge‐related goals because knowledge acquisition, career prospects and social network are more important to them. Therefore, older adults are more likely to utilise non‐confrontational approaches, such as yielding and delaying responding, than their younger counterparts when dealing with work conflict (Davis, Kraus, & Capobianco, ). These findings suggest that age may influence the relationship between social identity salience, motivational orientation and conflict strategies.…”