Explaining the Relationship Between Age Dissimilarity and Emotional Exhaustion: The Roles of Social Exclusion and Cognitive Dissimilarity

Due to the increase of the retirement age and better healthcare systems, it has become common for employees to work with young and old coworkers. However, age differences can cause misunderstandings, conflicts, and discrimination in the workplace. To improve the management of age differences, it is essential to investigate age dissimilarity (i.e., an employee's age difference relative to her or his coworkers) and its effects on employees' well-being. Past age dissimilarity research mostly predicted dysfunctional age dissimilarity effects on employee outcomes, but it often could not confirm its predictions. Prior research also neglected to investigate age dissimilarity effects on employees' well-being. To address these research gaps and to improve the management of age differences in the workplace, we draw on social identity theory and investigate the mediating role of social exclusion for the relationship between age dissimilarity (relative to coworkers) and employees' emotional exhaustion. We further expect that cognitive dissimilarity (relative to coworkers) plays a moderating role to determine the direction of age dissimilarity effects. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a three-phase survey study with 462 employees. The results show that social exclusion only mediates the indirect relationship between age dissimilarity and emotional exhaustion when an employee perceives cognitive dissimilarity relative to coworkers.