individual differences: age & gender
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Individual Differences:
Age & Gender
Lindsey GrecoSpring, 2011
Age Statistics for Older Workers Institutional Barriers for Older Workers
Attitudes Practices
Legal concerns Physiological Changes
BLS Data
BLS Data
BLS Data
Institutional Barriers for Older Workers
Healthy retirees have 10-30 years of life expectancy Largest untapped source of potential labor in
economy
Face disincentives to work Workplace attitudes and practices may
hinder older workers’ employment opportunities
Organizational Attitudes: Fact or Fiction?
Older workers can’t or won’t learn new skills Older workers don’t stay on the job long Older workers take more sick days than
younger workers Older workers aren’t flexible or adaptable Older workers are more expensive
Advantages of Older Workers Are careful, calm, and effective Less training costs due to their experience Higher organizational commitment Equal or better attendance rates Lower on-the-job accident rates Higher performance and productivity
More reliable than younger workers, stronger work ethic, can serve as mentors
Can help address talent shortages, recruitment challenges, and unwanted turnover
Organizational Practices: Financial Disincentives
Healthcare costs may increase for older workers, making it difficult to get hired into new jobs
Pension plans Benefits resemble a hill Pension accrual rises with time on the job, then peaks and falls Peak accrual occurs after 30 years
Staying on job for additional years can result in negative pension accruals
Phased retirement plans reduces hours to part time and then eases them into retirement Have to deal with tax code (paying out of pension plan),
Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)
International Organizational Practices
Increase national pension eligibility to 65 (UK & Japan) Government promoted programs that match older workers
with employers or offer training opportunities (UK & Japan) Changed benefit calculation to reward those who work
longer by basing pension on lifetime earnings instead of the highest 15 out of 30 years (Sweden)
Increased the reward for those who defer drawing benefits from the national pension system (UK)
Creation of a government commission to explore new policies to promote skill development for older workers (Sweden)
Legal Considerations Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)
Protects workers over 40 from discrimination Applies to private and federal entities
Does not apply to state governments Enforced by the EEOC
Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) Sets minimum standards for pension plans in private
industry. Does not require any employer to establish a pension plan.
It only requires that those who establish plans must meet certain minimum standards.
Enforced by the DOL
Considerations for Older Workers
As people age they are at higher risk for several diseases and injuries are much more severe
Elderly have a higher risk of workplace fatalities relative to their share of employment
Higher rates of fatalities and falls Loss of physical fitness, environmental hazards, adverse effects of
medication
Although older workers are less likely to be hurt seriously enough to lose work time, they often take twice the time needed to return to work. Causes increased economic burden on medical care system,
corporation costs, and individual hardships More often have broken bones/multiple injuries Take longer to heal
Physiological Changes
Vision Hearing Musculoskeletal Co-morbidities and Chronic Diseases
Vision Decline in static and dynamic visual acuity, loss of contrast
sensitivity, decrease in dark adaptation, increase in susceptibility to glare.
Clutter (i.e., non-target information in the visual field) and search deficiencies make it more difficult for older workers to see critical information and easier to miss it because of clutter
Workplace accommodations: Controls that are well lit, clean, uncluttered displays Illumination should increase without creating glare. Printed material (including instructions and warnings) should be
large (at least 12pt font) Older people have a restricted field of view, so they are least likely
to notice signs that are not in their direct line of sight Color-coding should be provided on changes in ramps and surfaces
to prevent falls, which are the leading occupational fatality among older workers
Hearing Age-related hearing loss is thought to begin at about age 35,
but becomes more pronounced with advancing age Older workers score significantly lower than younger workers
in auditory task performance Poor auditory discrimination
Orgs should try to control noise exposure in the environment Soft music, sound-absorbing materials Create conference tables and rooms that reduce echoing and
facilitate communication
Conduct audiometric exams annually Encourage use of hearing protection when necessary
Musculoskeletal Changes Muscular strength at 51-55 is 80% of that at 31-35
Reduction in joint mobility and manual dexterity For young workers, tool design is unrelated to job performance For old workers, poorly designed tools had lowest JP of all groups High design quality led to highest JP of all groups
Slowing of reaction and movement times Depending on task complexity, older adults are slower to respond. Response speed has a linear relationship with task complexity Older adults have more difficulty managing or coordinating multiple
tasks But older workers have more experience than younger workers
So older workers apply previously learned skills to current situations, resulting in comparable performance with younger workers
Considerations: allowance of longer response time, additional practice, frequent refresher training. Training should be tailored to meet the needs of older adults
Co-morbidities and Chronic Diseases
Arthritis High blood pressure Visual and hearing impairments Emerging problem is the use of medications
Impact physical/cognitive abilities and increase the risk of drug interaction
Gender Biological Differences
Physical brain structure Hormones
Behavioral Differences Communication Mate Guarding
At Work Leadership Style Job Stress Mental Health Workplace Anger
Biological Differences Brain Structure
Researchers generally believe the female brain is organized to function more symmetrically allowing integration of left and right brain functions more readily than the male brain.
Male and female brains may be somewhat differently structured with the two cerebral hemispheres being more specialized and less well interconnected in men than in women.
Hormones Role in initial brain development Continued impact on behavior patterns
Different Task/Skill Performance
Differences in the way men and women estimate time, judge speed of things, carry out mental mathematical calculations, orient in space and visualize objects in three dimensions, etc.
Men Tend to be higher in independence, dominance, spatial and
mathematical skills, and rank-related aggression e.g., men have an advantage in tests that require the subject to
imagine rotating an object or manipulating it in some other way
Women Tend to be better in human relations: recognizing emotional
overtones in others and in language, emotional and artistic expressiveness, esthetic appreciation, verbal language and carrying out detailed and pre-planned tasks. e.g., women generally can recall lists of words or paragraphs of text
better than men
Communication Male
Hierarchy based on competition Goals are real and material Rules and individual roles are clearly established
in each situation
Women Hierarchy based on cooperation Goals are social and sharing Rules and individual roles are sometimes
tentative and changing
Mate Guarding Men are more likely than women to become distressed by
sexual infidelity Women are more likely than men to become distressed by
emotional infidelity These fundamental sex differences have now been replicated
by many different scientists in many diverse cultures – China (David Geary) Sweden (Michael Wiederman) Netherlands (Bram Buunk and Pieternel Dijkstra) Germany (Alois Angeitner and Victor Oubaid) Japan (Mariko Hasegawa and Toshikazu Hasegawa) Korea (Jae Choe)
Mate Guarding 234 participants were asked to imagine that their partner
had become both sexually and emotionally involved with someone else then asked to state which component of the betrayal they
found more upsetting.
63% of the men, but only 13% of the women, found the sexual component of the infidelity to be more upsetting.
87% of the women, but only 37% of the men, found the emotional component of the infidelity to be more upsetting.
Supports the evolutionary hypothesis that the fundamental psychological design of the jealousy adaptation differs for the sexes
Threatening Characteristics of Rivals
Which rivals are perceived to be the most threatening? Dutch, Korean, and American people were asked to rank 11
rival qualities according to which would be most upsetting. The rival characteristics ranged from “having a better sense
of humor than you” to “being a more skilled sexual partner than you”
Men in all three cultures, more than women, reported that they would experience greater distress when a rival surpassed them on the dimensions of: financial prospects, job prospects, and physical strength.
Women in all three cultures, more than men, reported greater distress when a rival had: more attractive face or a more desirable body.
Gender and Management
Women make up: 38% of first or mid-level managers 29% of executive or senior-level managers
Of Fortune 500 Firms: 1.8% of CEOs 9.4% of highest clout positions (executive VP
and above) 6.4% of highest paid positions
Gender Differences in Leadership?
Overall, research has been inconclusive Slight tendency for women to be more
Transformational Person-oriented Communal
Men tend to display more traditional leadership qualities Transactional Task-oriented Agentic
Gender Stereotypes and Leadership
There is a definite gap between what observers perceive as leaders and what they perceive as female (Eagly & Karau 2002). The idea of “think-manager-think-male”
There is usually a similarity between the traits defined as masculine and the traits defined as manager, while there is little overlap between feminine traits and managerial traits. Traditional views hold that masculine traits are the
behavioral norm for leadership positions. Consequently, men are seen as better, “natural” leaders
while women are forced to adopt masculine behaviors to fit into male-dominated organizational settings.
Role Congruity Theory
Expectations & attributions for male vs. female managers Unfavorable evaluations of a woman’s actual leadership
behavior can result from the perceived violation of gender roles. When women become leaders they can face negative evaluations
because they fail to conform to cultural expectations of femininity (Eagly & Karau, 2002).
Females in leadership positions face prejudice from a perceived violation of their gender role
Studies have shown that everything else being equal, men are simply viewed as being more effective leaders than women (Johnson, Murphy, Selamawit, & Reichard, 2008). Less positive attitudes are associated with female leaders than
with male leaders.
Leader and Subordinate Gender
Evolutionary Theory Van Vugt and Spisak (2008) used evolutionary theory to
explain differing perceptions of male and female leadership. Female leaders were perceived as better leaders than male
leaders when competition came from within the group, meaning women were preferred for maintaining intragoup relationships.
Male leaders were rated better than female leaders when competition was between groups.
Suggests that gender preferences for leaders can vary depending on the conflict: either internal or external.
A male leadership prototypes (i.e., competitive) and female leadership prototype (i.e., communal) can be activated depending on the context.
Leadership Style & Job Stress Women in male-dominated industries face pressures different
from those faced by men in the same jobs or by women and men in more female-dominated environments
Women in male-dominated industries were equally interpersonally oriented compared to men in those industries in contrast to managers in female-dominated industries where
women were more interpersonally oriented than men.
The only factor which had a greater impact for women managers in male-dominated industries, compared with women in female-dominated industries, was discrimination. Related to experiences such as
colleagues of the opposite sex being treated more favorably feeling that one's sex is a disadvantage when it comes to career
progress
Leadership Style, Job Stress, & Mental Health
Neither women in general, nor women in male-dominated industries, experienced worse psychological health than men.
Leaders in male-dominated industries reported worse psychological health than managers in female-dominated industries. May mean that larger pressures affect women
and men in male-dominated industries equally
Gender, Organizational Status, and Workplace Anger Expression
Females are socialized to approach and express their anger indirectly and passively
Males are taught to keep a stiff upper lip and remain emotionally inexpressive But, the are permitted, and perhaps expected,
to display their anger directly, if not aggressively.
Anger control was the most frequently reported form of expression across all respondents
Anger Expression Differences in the outward expression of anger were non-
significant Although men reported outwardly expressing their anger
more frequently than did females
Lower status males reported expressing their anger more frequently than did their female counterparts
Employees with lower status were more likely to outwardly and upwardly express their anger than were higher status members likely to outwardly direct their anger downward
Employees of both sexes and at both high and low levels of the hierarchy reported controlling their anger and holding their anger in when in the presence of those at a different status level
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