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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Disconfirmation of person expectations by older and younger adults
— implications for social vigilance | | Author(s) | Oscar Ybarra, Denise C Park |
| Journal title | Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 57B, no 5, September 2002 |
| Pages | pp P435-P443 |
| Keywords | Mental clarity ; Attitude ; Age groups [elderly] ; Young adults [20-25] ; Comparison ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Whether age-related declines affect performance when people form impressions of others is examined in two experiments. Results of the first showed that younger and older participants who held positive expectancies about an individual spent more time processing and had better memory for information that was inconsistent rather than consistent with their expectancies. But those who held negative expectancies tended to focus on information that was consistent rather than inconsistent with their expectations. In Experiment 2, the task was made more demanding by limiting the amount of time participants had in which to form their impressions. Under these conditions, older participants who had positive expectations showed deficits in memory for negative information compared to younger participants. As expected, both groups performed similarly when they held negative expectancies. Although both younger and older people process social information similarly under self-paced conditions, older people may be at a disadvantage when processing negative information about positively characterised individuals when the context in which impressions are formed is cognitively demanding. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-021107208 A |
| Classmark | DF: DP: BB: SD6: 48: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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