Withdrawing from job search: The effect of age discrimination on occupational future time perspective, career exploration, and retirement intentions.

Older job seekers dropping out of the active workforce is a major challenge for individuals, organizations, and society, resulting in the need to protect and extend their working lives. Based on the discouraged workers approach, this study used career construction theory to study how past experiences can discourage older job seekers and make them withdraw from the job search. Specifically, we explored how age discrimination is connected to lower levels of older job seekers' occupational future time perspective (i.e., remaining time and future opportunities) and how it results in less career exploration and higher retirement intentions. Using a three-wave design, we followed 483 older job seekers in two countries (the United Kingdom and the United States) over a total period of two months. Results of structural equation modeling showed that perceived age discrimination decreased older job seekers' remaining time and future opportunities. Further, remaining time was negatively linked to retirement intentions, whereas future opportunities were positively linked to career exploration. Furthermore, results revealed two indirect effects of age discrimination on (1) retirement intentions via remaining time and (2) career exploration via future opportunities. These results show how damaging age discrimination can be in the job search context and we call for the search of potential moderators that can buffer the negative impact of age discrimination. Practitioners should work on protecting older job seekers' occupational future time perspective to keep them active instead of losing them to early retirement.

How strong is my safety net? Perceived unemployment insurance generosity and implications for job search, mental health, and reemployment.

While social science has substantially documented the individual experience of unemployment, less is known about the role of contextual variables. One contextual factor that is important for unemployed job seekers is the unemployment insurance (UI) that they receive. This study examines the relationships between job seeker perceptions of UI generosity and mental health during unemployment, reemployment speed, and reemployment quality. Drawing upon psychological construal theory, we conceptualize UI generosity as creating psychological distance from the reemployment goal, generating consequences for the job search, mental health, and reemployment. We tested our hypotheses with a four-wave survey design of job seekers looking for work in 3 different countries (United States, Germany, and the Netherlands). Perceived UI generosity was associated with slower reemployment speed, via reduced time pressure, job search priority, and job search metacognition. Perceived UI generosity was related to higher mental health, via reduced time pressure and financial strain. Finally, perceived UI generosity was related to increased reemployment quality, both directly as well as indirectly through lower time pressure and financial strain, and subsequent higher mental health. Our findings provide previously unavailable empirical insight into the mechanisms explaining the positive and negative outcomes of UI generosity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Working hard and working smart: motivation and ability during typical and maximum performance.

The distinction between what people can do (maximum performance) and what they will do (typical performance) has received considerable theoretical but scant empirical attention in industrial-organizational psychology. This study of 138 participants performing an Internet-search task offers an initial test and verification of P. R. Sackett, S. Zedeck, and L. Fogli's (1988) model of typical versus maximum performance: Motivation--in the form of direction, level, and persistence of effort exerted--rose significantly under the maximum performance condition. Consequently, the correlation between motivation--in the form of direction and level of effort--and performance diminished, whereas the correlation between ability--in the form of declarative knowledge and procedural skills--and performance increased under the maximum performance condition. Overall, results confirm the general propositions of the model. Implications for the generalizability of these findings, theory, practice, and directions for future studies of typical and maximum performance are discussed.