Getting Older and Getting Happier with Work: An Information-Processing Explanation

Job attitudes and subjective well-being (SWB) have important relationships with one another. Moreover, job attitudes and,
to an extent, SWB are related to chronological age. Owing to a “graying” workforce in industrialized countries, uncovering
how age influences job attitudes is increasingly important. The present work explores the effects of cognitive-aging research
on the item response process during attitude measurement. Research finds that older individuals attend selectively to positive
affective experiences and weigh affective experiences more heavily during judgment than younger individuals. Based on cognitive-aging
research, we propose an item-response process and hypothesize that chronological age results in a specific form of measurement non–equivalence. Our hypothesis is tested on 2 different samples of university employees, across 3 different job attitudes rooted in emotional
experiences. Results indicate age-related measurement non-equivalence across all 3 attitudes such that older employees report
more positive job attitudes than younger employees even when controlling for the latent attitude construct. Our findings suggest
caution in interpreting of age-satisfaction correlations, focusing greater attention on understanding item response processes
of older versus younger individuals and increased attention to job-related emotional experience for older employees.