Title: Activation of Aging Stereotypes in Younger and Older Adults | The Journals of Gerontology: Series B | Oxford Academic
Headings: The Activation of Aging Stereotypes in Younger and Older Adults
The Activation of Aging Stereotypes in Younger and Older Adults
Published:
Abstract
Issue Section:
Methods
Overview
Participants and Design
Stimuli
Procedure
Results
Explicit Aging Attitude Measure
Implicit Measure
Age-Based Stereotyping
Age-Based Prejudice
Discussion
Automatic Stereotyping
Automatic Prejudice
Appendix
Notes
References

Content: As for attitudes toward older people, the literature has suggested that perceptions of elderly individuals as a group are more negative compared with perceptions of young or middle-aged adults, although ratings of older people rarely fall at the negative end of most scales ( Crockett & Hummert, 1987; Lutsky, 1980 ). Perceptions of elderly individuals, however, tend to be as positive as perceptions of younger adults, and when age differences are observed those differences have been inconsistent in favoring either age group ( Hummert et al., 1995 ). Hummert and her colleagues ( Crockett & Hummert, 1987; Hummert et al., 1995) contended that this inconsistency between attitudes toward elderly individuals versus older people as a group might be due to the multiple stereotypes of older adults that people hold. Compatible with this assumption, research on ambivalent stereotypes suggests that attitudes toward elderly people may be marked by both positive and negative perceptions ( Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002 ). Fiske and colleagues proposed that people's attitudes toward different groups are driven by their perceptions of a group's competence and warmth. These perceptions lead people to place most groups into one of two categories: (