Why do we act as old as we feel? The role of occupational future time perspective and core self-evaluations in the relationship between subjective age and job crafting behaviour

Work and organizational psychologists have become increasingly interested in age constructs besides chronological age. A recent study reported a negative relationship between subjective age and job crafting behaviour among late-career employees. We extend this research by investigating two potential explanations for this association. First, we hypothesize that occupational future time perspective (OFTP) mediates the relationship. Second, we suggest that core self-evaluations confound the relationships among these variables. Using a large and age-heterogeneous sample (N = 660) and two measurement waves, we first replicated the previous finding of a negative association between subjective age and job crafting assessed six months later. Second, OFTP mediated this relationship. Third, this indirect effect became non-significant when additionally controlling for core self-evaluations. Fourth, exploratory cross-lagged analyses revealed a negative effect of job crafting behaviour on change in subjective age across six months (but not vice versa), and this effect was mediated by OFTP. Finally, this indirect effect remained significant when controlling for core self-evaluations. Overall, these findings contribute to the literature on age in the work context by suggesting that employees’ engagement in job crafting behaviour decreases their subjective age over time due to a more open-ended OFTP.