Aggression from service recipients threatens the core source of meaning in helping professions: the sense that one's work has purpose and impact. As workforces age, understanding how older workers sustain work meaningfulness under hostile encounters is both a scientific and societal imperative. Bridging Applied Gerontology and Work and Organizational Psychology, we integrate lifespan developmental theory with a self-relevant process perspective to explain when and why aggression undermines meaningful work—and for whom. We theorize that age-related gains in decentering—the capacity to adopt a distanced, non judgmental stance toward one's experiences—buffer the negative effects of recipient aggression on work meaningfulness, thereby reducing withdrawal intentions and sustaining service performance.


We tested our model in a three-wave, multi-source study of 316 nurses and 37 supervisors in a large hospital. Recipient aggression lowered work meaningfulness, which in turn increased withdrawal intention and reduced job performance. Age was positively associated with decentering, and decentering attenuated the link between aggression and meaningfulness; the indirect effects of aggression on withdrawal and performance via meaningfulness were significantly weaker for older (higher decentering) nurses than for younger (lower decentering) nurses. These findings reposition aging as a resource: older workers' decentering helps preserve meaning amid mistreatment.


We identify decentering as an emerging, transdisciplinary construct connecting gerontology and organizational behavior. Practically, our findings show that cultivating decentering can blunt the impact of recipient aggression on work meaningfulness—and, in turn, withdrawal and performance. Societal applications include scalable interventions (e.g., decentering micro‑practices, reflective distancing diaries), HR systems that recognize age‑related strengths, and patient‑service redesigns that reduce aggression exposure while safeguarding staff dignity, thereby improving retention, care quality, and sustainable healthcare delivery.