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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Forgetful but forgiven
— how age and life style affect perceptions of memory failure | | Author(s) | Joan T Erber, Lenore T Szuchman, Irene G Prager |
| Journal title | The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological sciences and social sciences, vol 52B, no 6, November 1997 |
| Pages | pp P303-P307 |
| Keywords | Memory and Reminiscence ; Ageing process ; Social characteristics [elderly] ; Attitudes to the old of general public ; Social surveys ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | Judgements about memory may be influenced not only by a target's age and lifestyle, but also by the age of the perceiver. In this US study, young and older perceivers made judgements about a same-aged or a different-aged target. It was assumed that similarity in age would be the basis for differentiating between in-group and out-group membership. Participants (i.e. perceivers) were from two age groups: a younger group of 48 adults aged 17-28 (33 women, 15 men); and an older group ranging from 60-85 years old (27 women, 21 men). Participants read a narrative in which a forgetful young or old target was described as having either a young or an old lifestyle. Perceivers attributed memory failures more to mental difficulty for old targets, but to lack of effort for younger ones, regardless of lifestyle. Lifestyle did make a difference to perceivers' memory opinion and sympathy for the old, but not for young targets. Perceivers had a less negative memory opinion when the old target had an old rather than a young lifestyle. Also, the old target with the old lifestyle elicited a greater degree of sympathy in young perceivers, but a lesser degree of sympathy in older perceivers. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-980121412 A |
| Classmark | DB: BG: F: TOB: 3F: 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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