Year started: 2020

Ends: 31 January 2023

Age-based discrimination is the most prevalent form of discrimination (Abrams et al., 2011), yet it is still under-researched. Most ageism research focuses on discrimination against older workers, in spite of the fact that individuals can often be judged not only as too old, but also as too young (i.e., bidirectional ageism). Perceptions of workplace competences may be guided by ageist assumptions and culminate in HR practices discriminating against either younger or older workers. As a result, people belonging to a group discriminated on the basis of age may perceive organizational policies as unfair, which could lead to negative individual and organizational consequences. This three-year project has started in February 2020, and will culminate with a book for the general audience, “Resumos da Fundação”. Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation is the funding institution of this project. CATÓLICA-LISBON School of Business and Economics, as the coordinating institution, and Iscte -Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (namely the Department of Social and Organizational Psychology and the Centre for Social Research and Intervention (CIS_Iscte), as a collaborating institution, are working together in the implementation of this project.

Objectives

The aim of this research project is fourfold: (1) to identify prescriptive age stereotypes that younger and older employees encounter in the workplace in Portugal; (2) to develop and empirically validate a scale that assesses prescriptive age stereotypes towards younger people and to assess its psychometric properties; (3) to investigate the prevalence of ageist beliefs against younger and older workers among the Portuguese workforce; (4) to examine employees´ organizational justice perceptions related to age discrimination and stereotyping, and their effects.

Scope

Our research is targeted to younger and older workers, mainly Portuguese - and also from the USA.