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Perceptions of Age and Creativity in the Workforce
Author(s) -
Chan Kara,
Hui Anna,
Cheng SheungTak,
Ng Yu Leung
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
the journal of creative behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.896
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 2162-6057
pISSN - 0022-0175
DOI - 10.1002/jocb.34
Subject(s) - creativity , workforce , perception , psychology , quality (philosophy) , significant difference , age groups , applied psychology , social psychology , sociology , medicine , political science , demography , philosophy , epistemology , neuroscience , law
As the workforce ages it becomes important to examine if there is misperception of creativity and age in work contexts. A laboratory experiment examined perceptions of the creativity of a team with both young and old workers and of a team composed entirely of young workers. Scripted videos portrayed such teams engaged in designing an outdoor advertising campaign. Altogether, 220 participants were randomly assigned to watch one of the video clips and complete a structured questionnaire. No significant differences were observed in the perceptions of the two teams' performance or of the quality of the resulting advertising proposal. In general, there was also no significant difference in the individual characteristics attributed to the four characters on the teams. However, participants aged 35 or above evaluated both teams and all four characters more favorably than participants aged 20–34.