The Relationship Between Subjective Age And Proactive Career Behavior: The Role Of Future Work Self And Mindfulness

While age is an objective value,people’s subjective perception of their age varies from person to person.Numerous studies have shown that subjective age tends to have greater explanatory power for positive developmental outcomes than actual age and has been applied in many areas such as aging,health,organizational behavior,and consumer behavior.However,studies related to subjective age have mainly considered its outcomes on individual’s life and psychology,such as health,cognition,and personality.Only a few studies focused on the effects of subjective age on work-related outcomes in recent years.As career environments become more boundaryless,it is increasingly important for individuals to demonstrate proactivity in career management.In light of the socioemotional selectivity theory,this study intends to explore the effect of subjective age on proactive career behavior,the mediating role of future work self in it as well as mindfulness as the boundary condition.Based on such hypotheses,the study combines the perspectives of life-span perspective and career development perspective,extends the range of actual age to the entire range of working age to enhance the external validity of the effect of subjective age on work-related outcomes,enriches the antecedents of the future working self from a cognitive perspective,complements the understanding of the facilitative function of mindfulness for future perspectives,and further strengthens the connotation of socioemotional selectivity theory.In study 1,18 full-time employees were interviewed(mainly through online interview)to preliminarily explore the effect of subjective age on proactive career behavior.Based on the semi-structured interview outline,study 1 focuses on individuals’ attitudes towards their subjective age,work status,career goals and future career management.MAXQDA 2022 was used for data analysis.In accordance with the socioemotional selectivity theory,sudy 2 explored the research hypotheses using a questionnaire design.Self-reported data on subjective age,future work self salience,proactive career behavior and mindfulness were collected from 267 full-time employees and analyzed using SPSS23.0 and Mplus7.0.The results show that individual’s younger subjective age helps to promote the proactive career behavior of the individual.Future work self salience plays as a mediating role between subjective age and proactive career behavior: younger subjective age is beneficial to form a clear future work self,and thus improve proactive career behavior.Mindfulness moderates the effect of subjective age: for individuals with low mindfulness level,subjective age will negatively affect their future work self salience and thus affect proactive career behavior.Based on socioemotional selectivity theory,the study preliminarily discusses the effect of subjective age on proactive career behavior and its mechanism and boundary condition,which complements the literature on subjective age and work-related outcomes.The study innovatively linked subjective age and future work self,expanding the understanding of the mechanisms underlying the role of subjective age on work-related outcomes while exploring the antecedent variables of future work self in a new perspective.The study pays attention to the moderating role of mindfulness and supports the facilitative function of mindfulness for future orientation,which is important for understanding how to proactively adjust the future work self and shape proactive career behaviors,further enlightening individuals’ participation in career management and companies’ talent management.