Sometimes we want vicious friends: Friend preferences are target-specific

Friends bolster health and happiness, with friend preferences directing us toward friends who can facilitate this. Intuition and research alike suggest people prefer friends to be kind and trustworthy and disfavor viciousness and indifference (and befriend the similar, familiar, nearby). Taking a target-specific approach, we predict and find people possess preferences not only for how friends should behave toward us, but—because our friends interact with others, and these interactions can affect us—people also possess nuanced, distinct preferences for how friends should behave toward others: (a) When targets of friends’ behavior are unspecified (reflecting previous work), preferences track how people want friends to behave toward us. In line with that work, (b) people want friends to be kinder and more trustworthy than not. But (c) people also want friends to be more prosocial toward us than toward others and (d) sometimes want friends to be more vicious than prosocial—toward our rivals.

The Work Values of Portuguese Generation Z in the Higher Education-to-Work Transition Phase

The cohort of young people born with or after the Internet has been dubbed Generation Z (Gen Z, or post-millennials). They are now entering the higher education-to-work transition phase, although this is yet to be studied. Previous studies have found that work values and work preferences vary across generations and national cultures, justifying regular and localised examination. However, very little is known to date about the work values of Portuguese Gen Zs. In this study, we describe the work values of Portuguese university students in the higher education-to-work transition phase and examine their influence on salient work-related preferences. We surveyed over 3000 students attending university degrees from eight main Portuguese universities. We find that Portuguese Gen Zs value social values above all, followed by intrinsic and then extrinsic work values, potentially configuring a unique profile. Work values partially explain work preferences such as employer size and salary expectations. Gender differences mark our results, with women expressing higher work values in all three dimensions and lower entry salary expectations. These results can be useful for employers seeking to attract the best university graduates, facilitate their integration and promote their development.

Structural legacies and the motherhood penalty: How past societal contexts shape mothers’ employment outcomes in reunified Germany

Motherhood penalties vary strongly across societal contexts. While most studies that aim to explain such differences focus on institutions, a smaller literature refers to the influence of cultural norms or a complex interaction between the two. Empirically, however, it is yet unclear if such norms play a role and how they—jointly with institutions—contribute to motherhood penalties. We make use of a unique historical setting that allows us to assess how societal contexts affect maternal work preferences and labor market outcomes in the short- and long-run. Germany’s division into socialist East and parliamentary democratic West led to considerably different gender norms. But German reunification in 1990 mostly realigned gendered institutions. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we show that East and West German mothers’ preferred and realized labor force participation and working hours nevertheless remain divergent. We then focus on East German women who moved to the West during and after the country’s transitionary period. Despite moving to a context with more conservative gender norms, East German mothers in the West retain and fulfill their work preferences. Our findings imply that it is the structural legacy of past norms and institutions, not current ones, that shapes maternal work preferences and thus pave the way for motherhood penalties. Moreover, societal norms at the time of childbirth do not directly affect mothers’ labor force participation, working hours, or wages. Gendered outcomes in the labor market are thus highly dependent on institutional and normative changes across cohorts.

Preferences for Learning and Skill Development at Work: Comparison of Two Generations

The changing economic conditions of the current dynamic and insecure labour market make learning a constant preoccupation of the workforce with view of meeting the growing qualifi cation demands. These demands are likely to infl uence the work preferences of both young people now entering the labour market and older people with established career paths. Research fi ndings suggest that the younger generation exhibits a stronger orientation towards learning and skill development as compared to the older generations. Moreover, studies show that the younger people are more ready to leave the organization when they have better learning opportunities elsewhere. The present study aims at establishing how preferences for learning and skill development in the workplace relate to a number of job and organizational characteristics. Particular focus is placed on the predictive capacity of perceived learning opportunities towards the tendency to leave the organization for either of the two generations. The study addresses work preferences of two generations in the Bulgarian labour market. To this aim, 121 respondents answered a55-item questionnaire consisting of newly developed scales as well as scales based on or adopted from standardized instruments such as the Extended Delft Measurement Kit (Roe et al., 2000). Contrary to fi ndings from previous research done in countries with different cultural and socio-economic background, the older people in our sample were more eager to learn and more ready to leave their organization in pursuit of better opportunities, ascompared to the younger generation. Another noteworthy conclusion is that the preferences for learning and development form different patterns in each of the two age groups and are expressed in a different way for each of the two generations.