Lisa Finkelstein, Northern Illinois University

Today’s workforce has a broader age range but less stratification by age than in the past – this leaves us more likely to interact with coworkers, supervisors, mentors, and direct reports who may not fit into our normative expectations for what is age appropriate. Moreover, we are bombarded with cultural messages about the supposed values, characteristics, attitudes, and desires of members of generations, making salient age-related stereotypes and potentially false expectations. Stereotyping has been the major explanatory process in age-related discrimination and mistreatment at work, but we are just recently starting to include a focus on the role of the age metastereotyping process to better understand interage interactions. In this talk Dr. Finkelstein will describe her past, current, and future work on age metastereotyping in the workplace.