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Ageism

Carolyn R. Fallahi, Ph. D.

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The facts about racism

Unlike sexism and racism, ageism continues to go largely unacknowledged in day-to-day life in the United States.

The current social climate allows people to say things freely about older people that they would never say about race or gender.

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The facts about Ageism Ageism is so firmly embedded within the

social fabric of US culture that few people even question the fact that age is considered a legitimate reason for limiting access to health care and productive employment.

Even though there is ageism in retirement and hiring policies, insurance practices, and other age-biased laws and policies, empirical evidence for ageist behavior in interpersonal settings is more elusive.

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Misperceptions about old age Because of improved sanitation and

vaccination programs, infant mortality has decreased.

Many children are now able to live out their entire life span.

1900 – 4% of the US population was over 65.

Currently – 12%. 2020: 24%.

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The Scientific Study of Aging

Older people do quite well! The misconception is that they have more problems than younger people.

Not true…. With the exception of the dementias (and older person’s problem), the prevalence of all other psychological problems decreases later in life.

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Dementia

Dementia is a disease of late life. It occurs far less often than many

imagine. Only 5% of people over 65 suffer from

some form of dementia. This percentage increases with age;

but the majority of people will never suffer from dementia.

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Stereotypes The prototype of an elderly person: on tv

they are portrayed as slow, confused, bent, and dowdy.

Elderly people fall squarely into the warm and incompetent cluster of stereotyped groups. People view them ambivalently as physically and cognitively inept but socially sensitive. Today’s elders are seen as low status, which elicits perceptions of incompetence and passivity.

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Stereotype of the older person in a nursing home

This stereotype of a frail person in a nursing home is misleading.

Only 5% of older people live in nursing homes at any point in time.

The vast majority live independently in the community.

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The definition of Ageism

Ageism: discrimination based on chronological age.

Ageism includes negative beliefs, attitudes, and stereotypes about elderly persons.

Although ageist attitudes are relatively easy to identify, it is unclear how these attitudes translate into actual behavior.

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Ageist behaviors

Ageist behaviors: behavior that discriminates on the basis of chronological age. Such discrimination can involve overtly hostile behavior, but it also includes behaviorss that may appear quite positive but that ultimately serve to prevent elderly people from attaining their goals.

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Ageist Behavior Ageist behavior, then, must be

contingent upon chronological age and must produce some sort of harmful impact.

Ageist behavior can involve overtly hostile behavior, but it can also include behaviors that may appear quite positive but ultimately prevent elderly people from attaining their goals.

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Ageist attitudes, beliefs and stereotypes

Behavior that is ageist is often presumed to be associated with underlying negative conceptions of the old.

First, we will look at evidence for ageism based on research that examines attitudes towards and beliefs about the elderly.

Conceptions of the old appear to be more negative than positive.

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Attitudes Research has found that age is a highly

salient dimension along which people are categorized.

Kite et. Al. (1991) found that age is more of a social category than gender.

Both young and old people share stereotypes of the elderly, although there are some differences in their categories.

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Stereotypes are often in opposites For example: common stereotypes include

wise, demented, kind, grouchy, experienced, incompetent.

While the stereotypes of the elderly are both positive and negative, people appear to hold more negative than positive beliefs about aging.

Heckhausen et. Al. (1989) asked young, middle-aged, and elderly adults to review a list of adjectives such as dignified, fair minded, shrewd, and powerful. Subjects rated each adjective for the degree to which it increased over the lifespan.

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Heckhausen continued As people age, aging is apparently

perceived as a process involving decreases.

Beliefs and stereotypes about the elderly are ambivalent but tend to be negative.

Negative conceptions of the elderly can be documented as soon as children are able to discriminate age among adults.

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Overall there is more negative stereotypes

Overall, more negative stereotypes about the elderly exist; negative beliefs about aging exist; and elderly people are evaluated more negatively than young people.

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The result of stereotypes Deaux (1984) expectancy model of the

effects of prejudice: stereotypes about the elderly will lead the elderly to develop specific expectations about their performance on particular tasks.

Negative attitudes and stereotypes can influence the elderly’s self-efficacy beliefs about task performance – beliefs that affect their actual performance.

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The elderly end up believing the stereotypes

If people perform as they expect to perform on a given task, they attribute that performance to stable and internal causes. Thus stereotype-consistent performance leads people to believe in and accept the specific implications of stereotypes about them.

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Some Examples

For example, elderly people who are aware of the stereotypes about aging and memory may expect to perform poorly on memory tasks.

If they do perform poorly; they assume that it is b/c they are old, and make an attribution that reinforces their expectations.

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The results of ageism

Medical settings: Gatz & Pearson (1988) suggest that even

though medical practitioners may not hold negative attitudes toward the elderly, they may possess specfic biases regarding their treatment.

For example, clinicians are more likely to prescribe drug therapy than psychotherapy for the elderly for the tx of depression.

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Physician – Patient communication

Physician-patient communication can be a problem, regardless of the age of the patient.

Studies show that patients remember very little of what their doctors tell them whether or not they are young or old.

Some research shows that this phenomenon worsens when the patient is old.

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Physician response Further, physicians in general

addressed elderly patients with less patience, engagement, and respect that they showed to young patients.

Young patients received more open-ended questions, more detailed information about their conditions, and more support from physicians – factors that presumably contribute to better treatment.

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Why the difference? Why the difference in treatment? Some say

that the elderly are more passive consumers of health care, and therefore do not seek or desire the same kind of treatment from doctors as younger patients, nor were they more tense or friendly than younger patients.

The research of Green et. Al. found substantial evidence that physicians treat the elderly differently from the young. This is especially important b/c the elderly spend more time with their physicians than any other segment of the population.

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Institutional settings

Babytalk to Elderly people: A glaring example of age-differentiated behavior in nursing homes is provided by the literature on “babytalk” directed to older adults.

Babytalk is clearly present in nursing homes. Staff members were audiotaped. 22% of their talk was judged as babytalk.

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How does babytalk affect the elderly?

While babytalk is quite pleasant for infants; the elderly responds to is as condescending when addressed to competent adults.

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Other examples: dependency

In nursing homes, age-differentiated treatment exists in the reinforcement of specific behaviors that promote dependency. Although residence in a nursing home setting implies some degree of dependency, elderly residents can typically engage in a considerable amount of independent behavior.

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Nursing Homes Rodin (1986) found that engaging in

independent behaviors improves their sense of efficacy in multiple domains.

But one problem with the elderly acting independently is that staff responses within nursing homes decreases. Baltes et al. showed that when residents engaged in independent acts, staff members did not respond to them. When they engaged in dependent behaviors, dependence was reinforced (e.g. staff attention).

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Intergenerational communication

The studies on intergenerational communication are mixed.

In one early study, Rubin & Brown (1975), college students were asked to rate the competence of people of arious ages acros a variety of cognitive skills, some of which are stereotypically believed to decline in old age (e.g. memory) and others of which are believed to increase (e.g. wisdom).

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Intergenerational communication

In general, students rated people’s competence in these domains as curvilinear – increasing until middle adulthood, and then decreasing.

Another project looked at the behavior of children as they interacted with elderly people (Isaacs & Bearison, 1986). Children aged 4,6,and 8 were first asked about their ageist attitudes. Four year olds did not demonstrate ageist attitudes while 6 and 8 year olds did.

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Intergenerational communication

In this experiment, each child was then brought into a room with a child-sized table, chairs, and 2 jigsaw puzzles.

The E and an adult confederate were in the room. Confederates were either elderly adults (approximately 75 years old) or young adults (approximately 35 years old).

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Intergenerational communication

All confederates were healthy, fashionably dressed, and had professional exerience working with children. Each child was asked to work on the puzzle with the confederate.

Behaviorally the children were quite discriminating. They sat farther away from, made less eye contact with, spoke fewer words to, initiated less conversation with, and asked for less help from aged confederates.

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Intergenerational communication

Montepare, Steinberg & Rosenberg (1992) looked at college students’ speech to their grandparents and parents.

Speech directed at grandparents had a higher pitch and was more feminine, deferential, and unpleasant than speed directed towards parents.

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We keep the elderly at a distance

Research also shows that we have a tendency to keep people at a social distance.

If we didn’t do this, we might see older people as a more variable group.

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Other reasons to keep the elderly at bay…. The threat of death

Terror management theory suggests that the elderly may represent a threat to the young of their own fate: the prospects of diminishing beauty, health, sensation, and ultimately, death.