Background

 Developed countries around the world face an increasingly aging society. Therefore, to supplement the declining labor force, many organizations are promoting employment support so that employees who have reached retirement age may continue working. However, there is a persistent bias against older employees, expressed in the belief that they lose their abilities and motivation for work as they age. Does older employees’ motivation truly decline with age? The purpose of this study is to clarify the state of motivation among older employees through a comparison across age groups. Kanfer et al. (2013) and Tao (2001) have shown that individual differences in motivation increase with age. 

Aims

 We examined the relationships between (1) individual differences in motivation, (2) psychological barriers (i.e., a sense of difficulty in tackling challenging or novel tasks despite having sufficient ability), and (3) subjective view of aging (i.e., how old one feels regardless of one's actual age).

Method

 These relationships were examined by administering a survey to 1,000 people in the workforce. To enable comparison of motivation by age, 200 people in their 20s to 60s were sampled. 

Results

 Contrary to the popular conception, achievement-oriented motivation (Ikeda and Morinaga, 2017) tended to be higher in people in their 50s and 60s than in their counterparts in their 20s and 30s. Furthermore, older employees who felt younger than their age tended to have higher achievement-oriented motivation. The results also revealed that "psychological barriers" to adapting to novelty are a cause of suppressed motivation to learn among people in their 50s and 60s. 

Conclusion

These results clearly indicate that motivation does not simply decline with age, but that individual differences in motivation among older people can be explained by subjective views of aging and psychological barriers. The results of this study also provide important theoretical and practical implications for the management of motivation in the context of aging.