Europe has witnessed transformative social challenges including increasing lifespan, which exposes age divides and resulting tensions. Age-diverse friendships, defined as friendships between people with a ≥15-year age gap, have been identified as a bridging factor between age groups, improving outcomes for both groups in various contexts. Yet, we have limited knowledge about age-diverse friendships, particularly in the workplace, where individuals spend a significant amount of their time. What are the antecedents, mechanisms, and individual outcomes of such friendships, and what role do they play in improving the workplace environment? Current research largely assumes that friendship holds a similar meaning across all types of relationships, including age-diverse friendships. However, we propose that age-diverse friendships may possess unique qualities.
Therefore, in our research, we investigate age-diverse friendships in the workplace, the meanings that employees associate with such a friendship, and associated factors that may distinguish age-diverse friendships from more homogenous ones. We conducted an online survey that asked employees from different organizations in European countries to voice-record stories of their workplace friendships. We then use AI and topic modelling to analyze how employees construct their experiences of age-diverse and non-age-diverse friendships, and how these constructed experiences correlate with the socio-demographic characteristics of friendship and organizational environment.
At the time of the conference, we will present preliminary language analysis (Whissel affect dictionary, LIWC-22): affective, social, cognitive, and perceptual dimensions of research participant language. We will also explore the clusters and differences in the meaning that research participants attribute to age-diverse and other friendships. The findings will enable us to create a dictionary of the unique characteristics of age-diverse friendships and highlight the differences in friendships between employees of similar ages.