Older and younger job seekers' attention towards metastereotypes in job ads.

Building on social identity theory and cognitive models on information processing, the present paper considered whether and how stereotyped information in job ads impairs older/younger job seekers' job attraction. Two eye-tracking experiments with older (Study 1) and younger job seekers (Study 2) investigated effects of negatively metastereotyped personality requirements (i.e., traits) on job attraction and whether attention to and memory for negative information mediated these effects. Within-participants analyses showed for both older and younger job seekers that job attraction was lower when ads included negative metastereotypes and that more attention was allocated towards these negative metastereotypes. Older, but not younger job seekers, also better recalled these negative metastereotypes compared to not negative metastereotypes. The effect of metastereotypes on job attraction was not mediated by attention or recall of information. Organizations should therefore avoid negative metastereotypes in job ads that may capture older/younger job seekers' attention and lower job attraction.

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Copyright: © 2024 Koçak et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.