Publication Date

2019

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Finkelstein, Lisa M.

Degree Name

M.A. (Master of Arts)

Legacy Department

Department of Psychology

Abstract

This thesis addresses the topic of metastereotype activation in the workplace. The thesis reports research that was conducted in pursuit of two goals. The first goal was the development of an implicit measure of age metastereotype activation. The second goal was to refine and test a theoretical model of metastereotype activation in the workplace. The model suggests that age metastereotype activation in the workplace depends upon contextual elements (e.g., age salience and evaluation salience) as well as various individual difference factors (e.g., age metastereotype consciousness, age identification, age prejudice, public self-consciousness, and external locus of control). Three studies were conducted in pursuit of the goal of creating an implicit measure of metastereotype activation. The first study investigated the valence and group representativeness of age metastereotype words from the literature. The other two studies piloted and retained word fragments as a measure of implicit activation of age metastereotypes, with one study using a student sample and the other using an Amazon’s Mechanical Turk sample. This implicit measure was then used in an experiment designed to test predictions derived from the theoretical model of metastereotype activation in the workplace. The study used a cross-sectional 2 (age salience: present or not) x 2 (evaluation salience: present or not) experimental vignette-based design. The results of the current thesis indicated that age metastereotype consciousness was an important

predictor of age metastereotype activation. The more metastereotype consciousness one reported, the more age metastereotype activation that occurred. The results of the experiment also showed that age salience in the current context did not predict age metastereotype activation. However, the experiment’s results suggested that evaluation salience influenced the relationship between age metastereotype activation and age metastereotype consciousness. Age metastereotype consciousness led to more activation of age metastereotypes in non-evaluative contexts than in evaluative contexts. Of the individual differences under investigation, age prejudice was the only significant predictor of age metastereotype activation. This relationship suggested that the more age prejudice an individual exhibited, the more likely age metastereotypes were to be activated. This was especially the case for those who were prejudiced against younger individuals. The results of these studies add to the growing body of literature on age metastereotypes by showing the importance of investigating both age metastereotype activation and its individual difference counterpart-- age metastereotype consciousness. Future research should further evaluate the extent to which context influences these relationships.

Extent

244 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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