Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Changing Nature of Work
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Changing Nature of Work
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Part I Introduction to the Changing Nature of Work
- Part II What Has Changed?
- 4 Changes in Technology
- 5 The Changing Nature of Work
- 6 Changes in Occupations, Jobs, and Skill Polarization
- 7 Changes in the Legal Landscape
- 8 The Rise and Decline of Organized Labor in the United States
- 9 Changes in Organizational Income Inequality
- 10 Work and Employment in Fluid Organizational Forms
- 11 Changes in Worker Demographics
- 12 Generational Changes in Personality, Values, and Abilities
- 13 Changes in Work Behavior Patterns
- Part III Implications for Talent Management and Impact on Employees
- Index
- References
12 - Generational Changes in Personality, Values, and Abilities
from Part II - What Has Changed?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2020
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Changing Nature of Work
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Changing Nature of Work
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Part I Introduction to the Changing Nature of Work
- Part II What Has Changed?
- 4 Changes in Technology
- 5 The Changing Nature of Work
- 6 Changes in Occupations, Jobs, and Skill Polarization
- 7 Changes in the Legal Landscape
- 8 The Rise and Decline of Organized Labor in the United States
- 9 Changes in Organizational Income Inequality
- 10 Work and Employment in Fluid Organizational Forms
- 11 Changes in Worker Demographics
- 12 Generational Changes in Personality, Values, and Abilities
- 13 Changes in Work Behavior Patterns
- Part III Implications for Talent Management and Impact on Employees
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter addresses generational changes and corresponding differences in personality, values, and attitudes. Both popular and academic interpretations of generations are described. We begin by defining generations, which are perhaps best thought of as fuzzy social constructs. Next, we detail key issues related to measurement of generations, notably teasing apart specific effects of age or development, culture or period, and birth cohort or generation. We describe two general models of how generations develop: a sociological model and cultural model. We also detail six models that predict the content of generations, from cyclical models to the no-change model. We argue for what we think are best practices for testing these ideas, while acknowledging the difficulties involved. We then describe some of the findings in the research regarding generational change as well as organizational specific findings. We conclude with a brief discussion of the future of research in this area.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Changing Nature of Work , pp. 261 - 273Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
References
Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55, 469–480.Google Scholar
Becton, J. B., Walker, H. J., & Jones‐Farmer, A. (2014). Generational differences in workplace behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 44, 175–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berdahl, A. M., Kao, A. B., Flack, A., Westley, P. A., Codling, E. A., Couzin, I. D., et al. (2018). Collective animal navigation and migratory culture: From theoretical models to empirical evidence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 373, 1–26.Google Scholar
Bianchi, E. C. (2016). American individualism rises and falls with the economy: Cross-temporal evidence that individualism declines when the economy falters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111, 567–584.Google Scholar
Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2016). Labor force characteristics by race and ethnicity, 2016. Retrieved from www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/2016/pdf/home.pdfGoogle Scholar
Campbell, S. M., Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2017). Fuzzy but useful constructs: Making sense of the differences between generations. Work, Aging and Retirement, 3, 130–139.Google Scholar
Campbell, W., Twenge, J., & Carter, N. (2017). Support for marijuana (cannabis) legalization: Untangling age, period, and cohort effects. Collabra: Psychology, 3(1), 2. http://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.45Google Scholar
Costanza, D. P., & Finkelstein, L. M. (2015). Generationally based differences in the workplace: Is there a there there? Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 8, 308–323.Google Scholar
Garimella, V. R. K., & Weber, I. (2017). A long-term analysis of political polarization on Twitter. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Web and Social Media, May 15–18, 2017, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (pp. 528–531). Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Palo Alto, CA: AAAI Press.Google Scholar
Gentile, B., Campbell, W. K., & Twenge, J. M. (2013). Generational cultures. In Cohen, A. B. (Ed.), Culture reexamined: Broadening our understanding of social and evolutionary influences (pp. 31–48). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Jokela, M., Pekkarinen, T., Sarvimäki, M., Terviö, M., & Uusitalo, R. (2017 ). Secular rise in economically valuable personality traits. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, 6527–6532.Google Scholar
Kowske, B. J., Rasch, R., & Wiley, J. (2010). Millennials’ (lack of) attitude problem: An empirical examination of generational effects on work attitudes. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25, 265–279.Google Scholar
Lyons, S., & Kuron, L. (2014). Generational differences in the workplace: A review of the evidence and directions for future research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35, S139–S157.Google Scholar
Mannheim, K. (1952). Essays on the sociology of knowledge. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.Google Scholar
Miller, J. D., Maples, J. L., Buffardi, L., Cai, H., Gentile, B., Kisbu-Sakarya, Y., et al. (2015). Narcissism and United States’ culture: The view from home and around the world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(6), 1068–1089.Google Scholar
Park, H., Twenge, J. M., & Greenfield, P. M. (2017). American undergraduate students’ value development during the Great Recession. International Journal of Psychology, 52, 28–39.Google Scholar
Pew Research Center. (2015). Section 1: Changing views of same-sex marriage. Retrieved from www.people-press.org/2015/06/08/section-1-changing-views-of-same-sex-marriage/Google Scholar
Pew Research Center. (2016). Support for marijuana legalization continues to rise. Retrieved from www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/12/support-for-marijuana-legalization-continues-to-rise/Google Scholar
Roberts, B. W., Edmonds, G., & Grijalva, E. (2010). It is developmental me, not generation me: Developmental changes are more important than generational changes in narcissism – Commentary on Trzesniewski & Donnellan (2010). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 97–102.Google Scholar
Smits, I. A. M., Dolan, C. V., Vorst, H. C. M., Wicherts, J. M., & Timmerman, M. E. (2011). Cohort differences in big five personality factors over a period of 25 years. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 1124–1138.Google Scholar
Smola, K.W., & Sutton, C. D. (2002). Generational differences: Revisiting generational work values for the new millennium. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23, 363–382.Google Scholar
Strauss, W. & Howe, N. (1992). Generations: The history of America’s future, 1584 to 2069. New York, NY: William Morrow.Google Scholar
Terracciano, A., McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. Jr (2010). Intra-individual change in personality stability and age. Journal of Research in Personality, 44, 31–37.Google Scholar
Trzesniewski, K. H., & Donnellan, M. B. (2010). Rethinking “Generation Me”: A study of cohort effects from 1976–2006. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 58–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Twenge, J. M. (2009). Generational changes and their impact in the classroom: Teaching Generation Me. Medical Education, 43, 398–405.Google Scholar
Twenge, J. M. (2010). A review of the empirical evidence on generational differences in work attitudes. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25(2), 201–210.Google Scholar
Twenge, J. M. (2013, August 12). How dare you say narcissism is increasing? Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-narcissism-epidemic/201308/how-dare-you-say-narcissism-is-increasing.Google Scholar
Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, S. M. (2008). Generational differences in psychological traits and their impact on the workplace. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23, 862–877.Google Scholar
Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2009). The narcissism epidemic: Living in the age of entitlement. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Twenge, J. M., & Campbell, W. K. (2018). Cultural individualism is linked to later onset of adult-role responsibilities across time and regions. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(4), 673–682.Google Scholar
Twenge, J. M., Campbell, W. K., & Freeman, E. C. (2012). Generational differences in young adults’ life goals, concern for others, and civic orientation, 1966–2009. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 1045–1062.Google Scholar
Twenge, J. M., Campbell, S. M., Hoffman, B. J., & Lance, C. E. (2010). Generational differences in work values: Leisure and extrinsic values increasing, social and intrinsic values decreasing. Journal of Management, 36, 1117–1142.Google Scholar
Twenge, J. M., Carter, N. T., & Campbell, W. K. (2015a). Time period, generational, and age differences in tolerance for controversial beliefs and lifestyles in the United States, 1972–2012. Social Forces, 94, 379–399.Google Scholar
Twenge, J. M., Carter, N. T., & Campbell, W. K. (2017). Age, time period, and birth cohort differences in self-esteem: Reexamining a cohort-sequential longitudinal study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(5), e9–e17.Google Scholar
Twenge, J. M., Exline, J. J., Grubbs, J. B., Sastry, R., & Campbell, W. K. (2015b). Generational and time period differences in American adolescents’ religious orientation, 1966–2014. PLOS ONE, 10(5), e0121454.Google Scholar
Twenge, J. M., Konrath, S., Foster, J. D., Keith Campbell, W., & Bushman, B. J. (2008). Egos inflating over time: A cross‐temporal meta‐analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality, 76, 875–902.Google Scholar
Wegman, L. A., Hoffman, B. J., Carter, N. T., Twenge, J. M., & Guenole, N. (2018). Placing job characteristics in context: cross-temporal meta-analysis of changes in job characteristics since 1975. Journal of Management, 44, 352–386.Google Scholar
Welzel, C., & Inglehart, R. (2010). Agency, values, and well-being: A human development model. Social Indicators Research, 97, 43–63.Google Scholar
Wetzel, E., Brown, A., Hill, P. L., Chung, J. M., Robins, R. W., & Roberts, B. W. (2017). The narcissism epidemic is dead; long live the narcissism epidemic. Psychological Science, 28, 1833–1847.Google Scholar
Wong, M., Gardiner, E., Lang, W., & Coulon, L. (2008). Generational differences in personality and motivation: Do they exist and what are the implications for the workplace? Journal of Managerial Psychology, 23, 878–890.Google Scholar
Yang, Y., & Land, K. C. (2013). Age–Period–Cohort analysis: New models, methods and empirical applications. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.Google Scholar