We Were All Once Young: Reducing Hostile Ageism From Younger Adults' Perspective

Abstract

The worldwide spreading pandemic, COVID-19, has caused hostile ageism toward older adults. We adopted a new intervention to reduce such hostile ageism. “Imagine that they were Young” referred to the imagination of what an older adult might look like, think, and behave when they were once young, which was a reversed but refined intervention of the widely-used method of “Imagine that you were old.” In the present study, intergenerational tension was primed, and then 205 younger adults in China aged 18–37 were randomly assigned to 3 different conditions (“Imagine that they were Young,” “Imagine that you were old,” and control condition), asking them to imagine (and then write down) once older adults were young, or a future aging self, or read an unrelated essay respectively as experimental manipulations. Then they should distribute medical funds worthy of Chinese 1 million to two patients with COVID-19 of 25 and 85 years old indicating their attitudes toward older adults (or hostile ageism). Finally, we measured their general attitudes and stereotypes toward older adults. Results verified the effectiveness of both interventions, such that younger adults who took either intervention distributed more medical funds and showed more positive aging attitudes toward older adults than those in the control group. Moreover, “Imagine that they were Young” was tested to be even more effective than “Imagine that you were old.” A series of relative mediation models revealed that the stereotype of warmth mediated the effect for both interventions on decreased hostile ageism behaviors, compared with the control condition. While “Imagine that they were Young” could additionally reduce hostile ageism through a higher level of “including the older adults in their self-group (the young).” This new intervention might be a good alternative to eliminate hostile ageism.

Everyday life experiences of Chinese community-dwelling oldest old who live alone at home

“…Some attention has been paid to ageism in the Chinese population, such as revealing the relationship between perceptions of older people as a burden and depression (Bai et al, 2016 ), reporting abuse (Liu & Hu, 2021 ). In addition, strategies aimed to reduce ageism have been proposed such as developing an intervention of “imagine that you were young” (Chen & Zhang, 2022 ) and advocating face-to-face intergenerational contact (Kwong & Yan, 2023 ). However, ageism in older adults living in the community remains an understudied area.…”

Pension Tension: Retirement Annuity Fosters Ageism Across Countries and Cultures

“…Compared with prevailing interventions on ageism, such as the PEACE program ( Lytle & Levy, 2019 ; Lytle et al, 2021 ), our attempts at facing the future-self propose a simpler strategy that can be implemented by individuals themselves to modulate their ageist attitudes. Future work should continue elucidating the underlying mechanism of future-self thinking, such as age identification ( Packer & Chasteen, 2006 ), aging anxiety ( Rittenour & Cohen, 2016 ), or inclusion of outgroups in the self ( Chen & Zhang, 2022 )—all in the name of ameliorating generational relations, especially as the world population grows older and more multigenerational ( North & Fiske, 2015b ).…”

Intergenerational Synchrony and Its Effect on Bonding and Group Closeness among Young and Older Adults

“…It was designed as a way to depict perceived closeness between groups and also considers components such as teamwork and time together [40]. These qualities of the IOS made it appropriate for measuring the level of perceived closeness between young and older adults (see also [41]), who participated in a joint effort to synchronize their movements according to pace of music during an 11 min. interaction.…”