Aging Stereotypes

Aging Stereotypes

What are stereotypes?

• Overgeneralized beliefs about a group of people

• Putting people in social categories and make assumptions based on that group

• Stereotypes may apply to some people

Why do people have stereotypes?

• The world is shaped by categories

• Cognitive shortcuts for faster processing because there is too much for the brain to process

What does it mean to say that stereotypes cause major social costs?

• Us vs them (in vs out groups)

• Prejudice vs discrimination

What are the three groups most prone to stereotypes?

• race

• gender

• age

What are the four negative aging stereotypes

• physical

• cognitive

• emotional

• sexual

What consists of physical stereotypes?

• frail

• dependent

• shouldn’t/couldn’t exercise

What consists of cognitive stereotypes?

• Can't learn new things

• Dementia is inevitable

What consists of emotional stereotypes?

• Lonely, depressed, and angry

• Don't want or need relationships

What consists of sexual stereotypes?

• No desire for sex or intimacy

• Being sexual is considered gross

What are positive aging stereotypes?

• Wisdom

• Wealthy or financially stable

• Caring and nurturing

• Leisure

Origin of aging stereotypes: what occurs in childhood?

• People begin to view older adults negatively as early as the age of 3

• Children are sponges

  • Taking in all of these negative messages

• Child-older adult interactions

Donorfio (1991): Kids paint an older person and younger person: how did they portray each?

• Older people as sad, with walking aids, face wrinkles

• Younger people as active and happy

Robinson et al. (2015) (not the findings)

• 141 children(8-12yo)

• Were asked to draw an old person they knew

• Were asked various questions about their drawings

What were the findings from this study?

• Majority drew one of their grandparents

• 73% described their OA as happy/content

• 10% described OA as angry/grumpy

• 9% as sad

• 79% depicted their OA in a positive way

• They may view OAs, as a group, negatively, but view their own OAs positively -> but doesn't carry over into the whole group = still view entire group negatively

Spreading of stereotypes (think about the ecological model)

• Social Attitudes

  • Family, friends, etc.

• Daily conversations/comments

• Media

How do children’s programs portray older adults?

• Lack of representation

  • Could send the message that older people are irrelevant

Robinson & Anderson (2006) not the findings

• Content analysis: e.g., ABC kids, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network

• Coded presence of OA characters and their depiction

• Watched 45 hours of content

Findings

• Over 1000 characters shown across networks: only 8% were older adults

  • 77% of OA were male

    • Children could be predisposed to OA characteristics of men

  • 23% of OA were female

  • Most were older white men: POC were rarely depicted

• Personality

  • 59% had positive personality traits

  • 41% had negative traits

Older Adults in Fiction TV Series (Markov & Yoon 2001): not the findings

• Analyzed 112 episodes of popular American fiction from 2004-2018)

• Randomly picked one episode of each show

Findings

• Saw 2003 characters: 6.6% (133) were OAs

  • 68% were men

  • 90% were white

  • 73% were upper/middle class

• Common stereotypes

  • Mostly positive: golden ager (super healthy, very active…), perfect grandparent

    • Found more positive than negative

  • Some negative: complaining/grumpy

What was the overall theme?

• Overall theme: presentation of older adults in children's and adults' TV isn't overly negative but needs more representation

What is this image showing?

Black line = the number of people in the real world who are those ages

White line = age representation in the media

What are explicit biases?

• Attitudes and beliefs we have about a person/groups on a conscious level

• We are fully aware and these can be self-reported

• Self reported beliefs

  • E.g., how warm do you feel towards those over 65

  • May conceal true opinions because of social desirability biases

What are implicit biases?

• Unconscious attitudes lying below the surface -> may influence behaviour

• Automatic social associations

  • E.g., implicit association test (IAT)

    • Captures attitudes people won't admit to or are unaware of

    • Evaluates reaction time differences between sorting faces and words the first time, and then the second time with the pairings switched around (good words with older people vs bad words with older people)

      • Being faster in one group indicates someone's beliefs/preferences

What are implicit attitudes?

• Most people hold some level of implicit bias towards a group

• These should be acknowledged and made into awareness -> reflect on our thoughts and actions to reduce the bias to change our future behaviour

What is subliminal and subliminal priming?

• Subliminal

  • Things that cannot be processed by the conscious mind

  • Less than 500 ms

• Flash words on screen fast enough to evade conscious awareness

• Thoughts and actions can be influenced without conscious awareness of this -> could be why stereotypes are hard to change

What three ways do stereotypes affect older adults?

• cognitive

• physical

• survival/longevity

Cognitive Effects: Chasteen et al., 2015

• Correlation design

• 301 older adults (65-96yo)

Measures

• Negative views (fear) of aging

• Self-perceptions of their memory

• Memory performance

  • Recall tasks

Findings

• People who had a negative few of aging also showed lower self-perceptions, those perceptions predicted lower performance

  • Problem: could be that people have poor memory causing them to view aging negatively instead of the other way around

Why is there a need for longitudinal research?

• Poor cognitive skills or physical health -> negative perception -> worse performance in studies

Cognitive Effects: Hess et al. (2003)

Lab experiment: priming

Measures

• Positive aging message group

  • OA can use strategies to help memory with age

• Negative aging message group

  • Memory declines with age no matter what

• Participants then did a memory recall task

Average recall performance

Participants had better memory in positive group

Cognitive Effects: Levy (1996)

Lab experiment: subliminal priming

Measures

• Positive aging primes

  • E.g., wise, guidance, learned, improved

• Negative aging primes

  • Declines, incompetent, forgets, confused

• Participants do a mindless distractor task while the subliminal priming words flashed on the screen then did a memory recall task

Findings

• Before the prime

  •  should be no major differences between groups, however, the negative group had better recall (even though no priming occurred yet = happened by chance)

• After the prime

  • Negative primed found decreases in performances

  • Positive primed increased in performance

A summary of these studies

• Negative aging views relate to poorer self-perceptions one of ones own memory and predict worse memory performance

• Being primed to thinking negatively about aging predicts poorer cognitive performance

  • Even without knowing it

Physical Effects: Levy et al (2002)

Longitudinal Study (best design)

Findings?

• Positive view of aging (50yo) -> better functional health (70yo)

• Controlling for baseline measures of health measures (e.g., people in poor health but with positive stereotypes still aged better) and SES

Physical Effects: Levy et al (2000)

Lab experiment: subliminal priming

Measures

• Subliminally primed to pos and neg aging stereotypes

• Did "stressful" tasks (math task and to recall stressful event)

• Measured cardiovascular responses (BP, heart rate)

Findings

• Those primed negatively had a higher rate of change for BP

• Exposure to negative aging views increases cardiovascular responses to stress

Survival/Longevity Effects: Levy et al (2000)

Lab experiment: subliminal priming

Measures

• Given hypothetical medical scenarios resulting in a fatal condition but given possible intervention

  • Had to choose if they would take an intervention that would prolong life (but the intervention is not simple)

• Positive aging primes

• Negative primes

Findings

Those primed positively would choose the intervention

Survival/Longevity Effects: Levy et al (2002)

Longitudinal Study

Measures

• Negative and positive view of aging

Findings

• More positive view of aging (starting at 50yo) -- 23 years later -> lived 7.5 years longer than those with a more negative view

• Controlling for age, health, and SES

Uniqueness of Aging Stereotypes (compared to other forms of stereotyping)

• Everyone will become the stereotyped group

• Importance of early intervention

  • Should be motivated to change attitudes