Attitudes toward older adults reported by young adults: Variation based on attitudinal task and attribute categories.

Abstract

Negative attitudes toward older adults are thought to be prevalent within the American culture. However, research on attitudes presents conflicting results. In this study, 2 factors were hypothesized to influence reported attitudes toward older adutts: the attitudinal instrument used (a rating task vs. an open-ended task) and the types of attributes assessed (cognitive, personal-expressive, and physical ) . The results confirmed that attitudes toward older adults were negative relative to attitudes toward younger and middle-aged adults, but the pattern of negativity differed by task and attribute category. Negativity was most apparent in the open-ended task and in the physical category. These results indicate that although general, negative stereotypes may exist, older adults are viewed as multidimensional people with both positive and negative attributes.

Intergenerational Contact, Attitudes, and Stereotypes of Adolescents and Older People

“…First, there is wide variation in the ways in which older persons are characterized in the various attitude inventories (Slotterback & Saarnio, 1996) from photographs of unfamiliar older men and women to sketches of only female older people. Kite and Johnson (1988) maintained that negative attitudes toward old people may be a function of poorly worded instruments that cue participants to evaluate older people based on their physical appearance and competence rather than on their personality traits.…”

Age-Related Stereotypes: A Comparison of American and Chinese Cultures

“…In a traitrating task, undergraduates indicated only poor physical abilities as more appropriate descriptors of increased age; no systematic pattern emerged of how appropriate they found attributes describing cognitive and personality variables for young, middle-aged, and old adults [14] . Unfortunately, whether the same pattern holds true for stereotypes held by old adults was not examined in the numerous earlier studies that have investigated perceptions of older adults of their own age group [ 7,12] .…”

Family income and attitudes toward older people in China: comparison of two age cohorts

“…Palmore (1982) suggested that negative stereotypes of older people were prevalent in American society. However, more recent studies found that negative attitudes toward older people were not as common as previously indicated (Slotterback & Saarnio, 1996). This may be due to a couple of reasons.…”