Centre for Policy on Ageing



The activation of aging stereotypes in younger and older adults
Author(s)	Alison L Chasteen, Norbert Schwarz, Denise C Park
Journal title	Journals of Gerontology: Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, vol 57B, no 6, November 2002
Pages	pp P540-P547
Keywords	Attitudes to the old of general public ; Young adults [20-25] ; Age groups [elderly] ; Canada.
Annotation	Participants in this Canadian study - 72 younger adults (mean age 18.86 years) and 59 older adults (mean age 70.56 years) - completed a lexical decision task in which the primes young, old or XXX were presented followed by a target word or non-word. Stimulus onset synchronies (SOAs) were varied to examine the effects on response patterns of stimulus and controlled processing (300 and 2,000 ms, respectively). Both age groups demonstrated strong stereotype activation for older stereotypes, but relatively weak stereotypes for young stereotypes. Both age groups also demonstrated a positive bias toward older people, which was not moderated by SOA. The findings indicate that both age groups share similar mental representations or stereotypes of younger and older people, and that ageism is not automatic in younger or older people. Rather, both age groups access their positive ageing attitudes faster than their negative ones. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-021216264 A
Classmark	TOB: SD6: BB: 7S
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.