Age Boosts Future Time Appreciation at Work, Not Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Motivation

Gross, Victor (2025) Age Boosts Future Time Appreciation at Work, Not Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Motivation. Bachelor thesis, Psychology.

Text Bachelor-Honours-Thesis-Victor-Gross.pdf Restricted to Repository staff only Download (569kB)

Abstract

Germany’s workforce is aging while birth rates remain low, reflecting a broader demographic trend across Europe towards an aging workforce. This raises the question whether older employees’ greater life experience makes them more willing to engage in interpersonal extrinsic emotion regulation by helping a distressed coworker regulate their emotions, or are they simply more focused on valuing their remaining time? We tested whether appreciation of remaining time mediates the link between age and motivation to help a coworker regulate emotions, and whether feeling close to a coworker influences this relationship. 251 German employees (ages 18–70) completed a time appreciation survey, watched two short videos of distressed coworkers, and rated their motivation to regulate each person’s emotions and how close they felt to them. Older participants showed slightly higher appreciation of remaining time, consistent with socioemotional selectivity theory. However, this appreciation did not translate into greater motivation to regulate others’ emotions, and this pattern was not affected by coworker closeness (no moderated mediation). Overall, simply valuing remaining time does not make older workers more inclined to help regulate colleagues’ emotions. Motivation appears more context-dependent than age-dependent. Future research should use improved motivation measures and varied emotional scenarios to explore when appreciating time might encourage helping others at work. Keywords: Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST), Appreciation of Remaining Time (ART), Interpersonal Extrinsic Emotion Regulation (IEER), workplace relationships, age differences

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor)
Supervisor name:	Scheibe, S. and Fousiani, K.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	None [Bachelor Psychology]
Date Deposited:	11 Jul 2025 14:07
Last Modified:	11 Jul 2025 14:07
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/5490

Actions (login required)

View Item