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: Research on the cognitive organization of traits has shown there are multiple stereotypes or subcategories of elderly people, some positive and some negative ( Brewer, Dull, & Lui, 1981; Hummert, Garstka, Shaner, & Strahm, 1994; Schmidt & Boland, 1986 ). Finally, Hummert and colleagues (1994) found a fair degree of overlap in the organization of the subcategories across young, middle-aged, and older adults, although elderly people had the most complex representations of older people, followed by middle-aged and young adults. Thus, research using explicit measures has shown that aging stereotypes are complex, with both positive and negative traits and subtypes being associated with elderly people. 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;