Mas quem foi que criou o mito sobre os velhos?

A revista do New York Times publicou um artigo sobre uma experiência levada a cabo por dois professores de economia sobre diferenças entre as capacidades de correr riscos, competitividade e cooperação de dois grupos diferentes de pessoas: um com participantes acima de 50 anos e outro com participantes abaixo dos 30.
Os resultados falam por si. Vamos lá ver se se acaba com estes "mitos urbanos".

Notícia:

"Myth of the Deficient Older Employee, The
Although workers who were 45 and older had lower unemployment rates in 2008 than younger workers, they stayed unemployed for longer periods, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is not surprising. Employers are often reluctant to hire older workers, not only because they have higher health care costs and sometimes command higher salaries but also because of their reputational stigma. Older workers are commonly thought of as being less productive and less willing to learn than younger workers, as well as overly cautious. But this year economists presented a more nuanced picture than the above stereotypes suggest.

In The American Economic Review in June, Gary Charness, an economics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Marie Claire Villeval, a colleague from the University of Lyon, published the results of a study in which they pitted "seniors" (those over 50) against "juniors" (those under 30) in three different decision-making tasks. These were formulated to test risk taking, competitiveness and cooperation.

As it turns out, the "seniors" more than hold their own. The seniors were also more cooperative, contributing more to their group during the cooperation test. The seniors outperformed the juniors on one competitive word game — and were only "very slightly less" competitive overall, Charness says. "Older workers," he stresses, "don't suffer from the deficiencies that a lot of people think they do."

Another welcome finding of the study came during the cooperation portion, when Charness and Villeval found that groups with a mix of ages outperformed homogeneous groups. For an optimum work force, Charness says, it is best to have a range of ages in the office. LIA MILLER"