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5 Alternative Perspectives for Research
Pages 75-86

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From page 75...
... , there is currently no strong empirical evidence for shared differences that would distinguish one whole generation from another. Chapter 4 describes these limitations and calls for improved attention to methods used, internal and external validity, and the conclusions that can appropriately be drawn from any findings in future research examining agerelated, period-related, or cohort-related differences in workforce attitudes and behaviors.
From page 76...
... the inherent appeal of and major psychological motivations for using generational ascriptions, (2) the risks of using those ascriptions in the workplace, and (3)
From page 77...
... 1904: "Never has youth been exposed to such dangers of both perversion and arrest as in our own land and day. Increasing urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli just when an active life is most needed, early emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline, the haste to know and do all befitting man's estate before its time, the mad rush for sudden wealth and the reckless fashions set by its gilded youth -- all these lack some of the regulatives they still have in older lands with more conservative conditions." (Granville Stanley Hall, The Psychology of Adolescence, pp.
From page 78...
... Compared with participants who do not like to read, for example, participants who like to read were more likely to believe that children these days like to read less compared with children when the participants were young. The researchers theorized that denigrating today's youth is a fundamental illusion grounded in several cognitive mechanisms, including a bias toward seeing others as lacking in traits in which one excels and a memory bias that projects one's current traits onto past generations.
From page 79...
... The Wall Street Journal (2017) published a note on its style blog suggesting that the term millennials had become "snide shorthand" in the paper, and observing that millennials span a wide age range and that some are leaders and shapers of society.
From page 80...
... Specific events occurring during critical periods of development may shape attitudes and values, but these effects appear to be influenced by life events and idiosyncratic experiences related to one's social class, geographic location, and other factors (Baltes, Reese, and Lipsitt, 1980)
From page 81...
... Normative age-graded influences have a greater effect in early and late developmental periods, when people purportedly have less agency, and can be represented with a u-shaped curve. Normative historical events have a greater effect during critical developmental periods (e.g., late adolescence/ early adulthood)
From page 82...
... Lifespan development theories consider the impact of historical events on human development but also stress the importance of biological or cultural factors (e.g., social class, urban/rural status) in explaining the differences among people.
From page 83...
... Thus, it is possible that as observers have witnessed changes in people's attitudes and behaviors, they have misattributed these changes to generations. As noted in Chapter 4, when sophisticated methods are used to study differences among people, the observed differences are found to be related more strongly to period effects, indicating gradual change over time in the general population, than to generation effects, which would indicate change limited to a subgroup of the population based on birth year.
From page 84...
... However, the persistence of generational stereotypes and biases can potentially create tensions in the workplace and impact employee decisions. Research assessing the effects of generational biases in the workplace and advancing theories on their influences on workforce behavior continues to be worthwhile.
From page 85...
... Future research designed to inform workforce management needs to take an integrative approach, recognizing the importance of work context, shared influences, and individual trajectories. Recommendation 5-1: Researchers interested in examining relationships between work-related values and attitudes and subsequent behaviors and interactions in the workplace should endeavor to identify and better understand alternative explanations for observed outcomes that supplement explanations associated with generations.


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