When I'm 64 (2006) / Chapter Skim
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A Social Psychological Perspective on the Stigmatization of Older Adults
A Social Psychological Perspective on the Stigmatization of Older Adults
Pages 174-208
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From page 174... ...
refers to the negative attitudes, stereotypes, and behaviors directed toward older adults based solely on their perceived age. Evidence of ageism can be observed in any number of domains, including the workplace (e.g., Finkelstein, Burke, and Raju, 1995; McCann and Giles, 2002; Rosen and Jerdee, 1976)
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From page 175... ...
Attitudes and Stereotypes In general, individuals express predominantly negative attitudes and beliefs toward older adults, especially in comparison to their attitudes to 1We would like to emphasize that our approach is not the only framework through which to investigate attitudes and stereotypes about aging and older adults. The structure of the review conforms to the norms of social psychological literature on social stigma.
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From page 176... ...
Neugarten suggested that many of society's negative stereotypes about older people (e.g., being sick, poor, slow, miserable, disagreeable, and sexless) are based on observations of the old-old, and that these observations get overgeneralized to the young-old.
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From page 177... ...
However, research taking more ecologically valid, adaptive approaches to the study of age-related cognitive differences suggests that stereotypes of cognitive functioning in older age are more severe than most actual deficits and, furthermore, that the stereotypes largely mask age-related cognitive performance gains (e.g., Adams, Labouvie-Vief, Hobart, and Dorosz, 1990; Blanchard-Fields and Chen, 1996; Colonia-Willner, 1998)
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(1988) , the trends both for the motorist's capacity and for alcohol were linear, suggesting that ageist information seeking may take place "throughout the life span and [be]
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found a similar reaction time bias when evaluating words that were primed with the words "young" or "old": individuals took longer to identify positive words when presented after the word "old" than when presented after the word "young." Differential automatic evaluations of racial, gender, and age groups have also been detected using a method developed by Greenwald and his colleagues (the Implicit Association Test, or IAT) (Dasgupta and Greenwald, 2001; Dasgupta, McGhee, Greenwald, and Banaji, 2000; Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz, 1998; Hummert, Garstka, O'Brien, Greenwald, and Mellott, 2002; Nosek, Banaji, and Greenwald, 2002)
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From page 180... ...
180 STIGMATIZATION OF OLDER ADULTS Gender Differences. Although only a few studies have considered the effect of target sex or gender in perceptions of older individuals, beliefs about older women and men appear to differ at least on some dimensions (Canetto, Kaminski, and Felicio, 1995; Kite, Deaux, and Miele, 1991; Kogan and Mills, 1992; but see also O'Connell and Rotter, 1979)
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From page 181... ...
Patronizing Versus Accommodating Speech Research on intergenerational interactions suggests that negative stereotypes and attitudes toward older adults can manifest in patronizing behavior (Hummert, Shaner, Garstka, and Henry, 1998; Ruscher, 2001; Williams and Nussbaum, 2001)
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. Furthermore, the use of baby talk with high-functioning older adults has been found to have negative consequences, such as lower self-esteem (O'Connor and Rigby, 1996)
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society and culture, it is fitting to devote some attention to potential interventions. In the research literature on racial prejudice and intergroup conflict, increased contact between members of different groups has been heralded as the "gold standard" route to prejudice reduction (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew and Tropp, 2000)
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Emerging Themes and Directions for Future Research The research examined above suggests overwhelmingly that, although it is true that aging has certain negative consequences, people (namely, younger adults) who exhibit negative stereotypes, attitudes, and behavior toward older adults overestimate, overgeneralize, and overaccommodate the extent of actual impairments and difficulties.
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From page 185... ...
Furthermore, given the research on the association between chronological age and negative stereotypes, will perceptions of older adults become more negative as older adults get even older? Social psychology has failed to regularly include age categories in examinations of the basic processes of categorization, stereotype activation, and stereotype application.
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From page 186... ...
Consequently, social psychological research on attitudes and attitude change may prove particularly important in communicating new findings about the actual capabilities of older adults to physicians, older-adult residential facility workers, employers, coworkers, and the general public. As with the problem of elderspeak, social psychologists, aging researchers, and practitioners can work together to devise messages, images, and interventions that provide accurate information about aging and older adults without promoting and reinforcing negative stereotypes.
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Additional evidence of the disconnect between actual age and perceived age can be garnered from research employing implicit measures of group identification. Hummert and colleagues (2002)
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. Similarly, research suggests that older adults often focus desired possible selves on achievement in current roles, such as "being useful and able to help others," and focus feared possible selves, by contrast, on interpersonal relationships and on physical health, such as "living in a nursing home" (Cross and Markus, 1991)
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RICHESON AND J NICOLE SHELTON 189 Implications of Self-Stereotyping Older adults are typically aware that although people hold positive and negative stereotypes about their age group, the negative stereotypes shape the predominant view (Kite and Johnson, 1988)
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. Specifically, the handwriting of older adults who had been subliminally primed with negative stereotypes of old age was judged to be older, shakier, and relatively more deteriorated than the handwriting of older adults who had been subliminally primed with positive age stereotypes (Levy, 2000)
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From page 191... ...
Taken together, these findings suggest that being exposed to negative age stereotypes, or living in a culture that endorses the negative stereotypes, may undermine older adults' ability to perform optimally on memory tests. Taken as a whole, this research suggests that exposure to age stereotypes can influence older adults' performance in a variety of domains.
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From page 192... ...
Managing physical appearance and perceptions of competence and reliance are most consistent with primary compensatory strategies. Specifically, older individuals may attempt to manage or alter their physical appearance because it is relatively easy to categorize people as young or old upon first sight, which, in turn, may prompt the activation, and perhaps application, of negative age stereotypes.
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found that although the older adults had fewer peripheral social partners compared to the younger adults, there was no difference between the two groups in the number of close social partners. Drawing on the theories of self-presentation and socioemotional selectivity sketched above, one could hypothesize that avoiding social interactions with strangers is a primary compensatory strategy.
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From page 194... ...
Efforts to reduce one's chances of being a target of prejudice, in other words, are consistent with older adults' placing greater emphasis on emotional comfort, a tenet of socioemotional selectivity theory. Secondary Compensatory Strategies When individuals do become the target of prejudice, they may rely on secondary compensatory strategies to help them change the way they feel about the social situation.
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From page 195... ...
or by limiting their social comparisons to intragroup, rather than intergroup, contexts. Research regarding older adults' use of social comparisons, however, is quite complex, and may not follow the patterns found for other stigmatized groups, highlighting the need for social stigma researchers in social psychology to examine this group.
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. Lastly, the use of temporal social comparisons and social downgrading may limit individuals' growth and personal development.
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This idea is consistent with research on adult social cognition that examines cognitive changes and performance within the framework of adaptive functioning (e.g., BlanchardFields and Chen, 1996) , as well as research revealing contextual effects on older adults' memory performance, such as the presence of a child as opposed to a young-adult listener (Adams, Smith, Pasupathi, and Vitolo, 2002)
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From page 198... ...
For instance, not all age-differentiated behavior is the result of negative stereotypes and some such behavior may even be beneficial for older adults. Furthermore, research suggests that many older adults are remarkably resilient in the face of negative stereotypes, employing a variety of coping strategies designed to protect their self-esteem and wellbeing.
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International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 22, 315-325. Brandtstaedter, J., and Greve, W
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International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 47, 205-216. Chasteen, A.L.
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International Journal of Behavioral Development, 26, 308-317. Fredrickson, B.L., and Carstensen, L.L.
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International Journal of Behavioral Development [Special Issue: Planning and Control Processes Across the Life Span]
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. Using the Implicit Association Test to measure age differences in implicit social cogni tions.
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International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 55, 271-295. Lamberty, G.J., and Bieliauskas, L.A.
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International Journal of Behavioral Development, 6, 221-231. Luszcz, M.A.
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. Perceptions of baby talk, frequency of receiving baby talk, and self-esteem among community and nursing home residents.
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International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 39, 21-32. Ryan, E.B., Hummert, M.L., and Boich, L.H.
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An ex ploratory study of perceived age norms. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 24, 241-256.
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