Welcome to The Spark, bringing you the world's best behavioral science. 

 Our take in this newsletter is straightforward and we'll lead with it upfront:

If you're a professional in the HR and talent space, you shouldn't go near generational cohorts (Gen Alpha, GenX, Boomers, etc.) with a ten-foot pole, and definitely don't pay anyone to talk about those topics inside your company! 

Generational Cohorts Don't Exist, But They Sound So Real

Generational cohorts (or generational differences) describe the popular belief that, based on birth year, groups of people are different from each other in meaningful ways. A key hallmark of the cohort narrative is that a shared formative experience for people in that generation changed them in a meaningful way. That being born into the world during a particular period of time makes us different than others because of the unique shared experience we've had. This leads to things like GenZ being super tech savvy, Millennials being job-hoppers, or Baby Boomers being resistant to change. References to generational cohorts are a part of mainstream media and everyday life. Yet, when we closer, generational cohorts essentially disappear.

Yet, it intuitively feels like generational cohorts should be true. The way we experience the world tells us that people are different from each other, and there appear to be patterns within that based on birth year. The patterns that we're seeing aren't generational cohorts though, this is actually what we're seeing:

• Age effects: People change in predictable ways throughout the course of their lives and careers, and there's great research that looks at the average changes that happen as this unfolds. The effects are typically small-to-moderate and are often tied to major life events: conscientiousness and emotional stability tend to increase, openness to change tends to decrease, and there's often a shift towards intrinsic motivation and meaning over rewards and status. The vast majority of what is described as generational cohort differences are simply age effects. Sixty-five year old employees in your company may be reliably different than twenty-five year old employees. That is indeed true. But we're fundamentally wrong when we use generational cohorts to describe this, it can be described by age.
• Period effects: Certain major events affect people across all ages simultaneously. A large economic recession, a global pandemic, or a steady change in social perceptions. In these instances, effects are seen across all ages. So again, it's not that one cohort is different than another, it's that people across all ages have changed in unison. Incorrectly, we then take these effects and fit them into the generational cohorts narrative. "GenZ at age 25 is different on [insert emotionally charged statement here] than Baby Boomers were at that same age!" Yes, that actually could be true, but it's because everyone has changed, not just GenZ. 20 year olds today are different than 20 year olds in the 1980s (because everyone at every age is different!). We can hold that to be true and still not believe in generational cohorts.
• Gradual changes: For much of the last 100 years, there has been a gradual increase in intelligence as measured by IQ tests. This is widely known as the Flynn Effect and it's one of the most robust findings in all of the research on changes across birth years. Importantly though, the increase has largely been gradual and consistent, with no discernable cohorts inside of the data. So we can say that people have on average scored higher on IQ tests over the last one hundred years, which is quite meaningful. People are changing based on birth year, and this get us pretty close to having generational differences. With the major caveat that the changes are gradual and steady, with no way to identify meaningful cohorts. So here we are again, no generational cohorts.
• Compositional changes: We mentioned before that a hallmark of the cohort narrative is that a shared formative experience changed the people in a meaningful way. Similar people across generations are being made different by their environment and experiences. Got it. Compositional changes explain something different, that the mix of people across cohorts might also be different. Comparable people remain the same across generations, but the mixture of people is changing: maybe there's more degree-holders, or more immigrants, or more women in the workforce. This could indeed lead to meaningful differences when looking at large groups of people across time, but these changes are also likely to be quite gradual. And they don't fit the generational narrative that some shared formative experience within a cohort led them to be different than others before or after them. Compositional changes are quite helpful to understand and can explain a lot. But they aren't generational differences.

Generational cohorts are a really compelling shortcut for us to make sense of a complex world. We see this in the power that the cohort narratives has in mainstream media and our everyday lives. Yet, it very strongly appears that differences across generational cohorts aren't meaningful. The differences that we see are due to age effects, period effects, gradual changes, and compositional changes. 

So what do we do with this?

The answer is crystal clear. If you're a high-end practitioner, you should:

Drop generation as a variable or grouping. The differences and effects aren't meaningful. Simply put, don't use generations in any meaningful way in your work.

Leverage more robust factors. Career stage, age, education, personality. These are more reliable than generations as a factor for analysis, with the gigantic caveat that it's impossible and foolish to make individual-level assumptions based on any of these attributes.

Scrutinize generational claims in vendor offerings, thought leader proclamations, and consultant reports. If you come across anyone leveraging the common generational narrative in their work, avoid them. Our view is if they haven't taken the time to work through the nuance of the topic, it's very unlikely that their offering or articles are worth your time. Kudos to Pew for their awesome rejection of generational cohorts.

Real shifts and variations do exist, but they look different. The Flynn effect and compositional changes are real, and reliable differences do exist based on age and major life events. All of these very much exist and it could be useful to be aware of these in business and organizations.

P.S. While we have strong views, we also really try to stay humble. It is totally possible that generational cohorts may emerge some day. We explore how this might emerge in the Vault collection on Generational Differences. So while they don't appear to be meaningful yet, one day that could change. 

P.P.S. Shoutout to Michael's mom! Michael called her while working through the analysis on Generational Cohorts to see how it would come across to a non-behavioral scientist. She graciously spent 15 minutes discussing things with him as he pitched her on the findings described above. Now Michael is waiting to see what his mom does the next time someone mentions GenX when they're both in the room. Don't let me down mom!

A PEEK INTO THE VAULT

Expanding List of Concept Deep Dives

The Vault now includes two additional Concepts in our Deep Dive collection - Generational Cohorts (covered above) and Predicting Performance in Recruiting (covered in the next Spark). If you like the type of analysis in this newsletter on Generational Cohorts, we think that you'll like the Vault as a whole. Link is here!

We hope that you enjoyed this edition of the Spark. See you again soon! And Happy Halloween!