ELDERLY STEREOTYPES · Nice but incompetent? The eldery stereotype in Europe

Nice but incompetent? The eldery stereotype in Europe

Europe is one of the regions in the world that shows the highest increase in the percentage of older people relative to its workforce. Despite the societal importance of this topic, ageism is still very under-researched. It has been repeatedly argued that a single perspective is unlikely to explain ageism; what is needed is a multilevel perspective in order to understand the issue more holistically. Hence, this project aimed to investigate both the contextual and also the personal underpinnings of age-related attitudes and older people´s ageing experiences. The first phase of the project focused on analysing representative data from the European Social Survey (ESS) module “Age Attitudes and Experiences of Ageism” (Round 4, N = 56752 from 29 countries) using multi-level modelling techniques. Relevant macro-level statistics (e.g., from Eurostat, United Nations) that describe the context of each of the ESS countries were compiled in a preparatory study. Altogether, five different studies were conducted that illustrate how the societal context combines with individual-level variables in explaining ageist attitudes and older people´s ageing experience. The key findings illustrate that: • The more modern a country and the higher the employment rate of older people, the more positively older people are perceived in regard to their status. However, these two factors also interact with each other (see more at http://blog.oup.com/2015/07/status-older-people-modern-times/) • Older people are able to age more successfully in wealthier than poorer countries. • Older people´s ill-health depends on how strongly they identify with their age group and how low the status of this age group is perceived in society. • Older people´s ill-health is greater in more unequal countries, i.e. countries in which income is distributed in an uneven manner. The experience of age discrimination explains why older people suffer from poorer health in more unequal countries. • Older people also feel more discriminated against if they think that society perceives their age group in a negative way along various socio-psychological dimensions; however, older people´s perception does not always match how they are actually perceived in society. The second part of this project consisted in a series of experimental and survey studies aimed at better understanding how malleable age stereotypes are. The key findings show that: • Cultural differences in ageism seem to depend on the questions asked. A survey study with questions about meta-perceptions (i.e., the normative context) corroborated that students from a more collectivistic-oriented culture (Taiwan, N = 249) were less ageist than students from a more individualistic-oriented culture (the UK, N = 184). However, personal attitudes about older people were more negative in Taiwan than the UK. • The “nice, but incompetent” age stereotype has an early start and can be found in children as young as six years of age and remains unchanged until adolescence (N = 103). • However, this ambivalent age stereotype can also be changed with a structured and theory-guided intervention program. The intervention program imAGES was developed (see also at http://www.leyaonline.com/pt/loja/ ) which includes a socio-cognitive and an intergenerational contact module. The results show that competence perceptions of older people were significantly higher for adolescents in the intervention group compared to the control group (N = 133 in Portugal). • The program can also be used in different cultural contexts. Results from Spain, Brazil, Austria and Lithuania corroborate that imAGES leads to more positive perceptions in adolescents across four countries (Spain, Brazil, Austria, and Lithuania; total N = 142). • An experimental study on the role of environmental cues also lent support to the idea that perceptions about older people are malleable. Exposing individuals to disgusting smells led to greater infrahumanization of older people compared to the control condition (N = 70). • Moreover, ageist behaviour directed at older people seems to be domain-specific. An online experiment showed that participants (N = 188) assigned to a cross-word scenario – a domain in which older people are generally perceived to be competent -- chose an older avatar as an online assistant significantly more often than those assigned to a technological scenario. • Finally, the stereotype that older people endorse more conservative values than younger people cannot be solely explained by age. Cohort and period effects also play an important role as found in the analyses of ESS data from six rounds. Altogether, these findings show that healthy and successful aging depends on individual, but also contextual factors. The studies point to encouraging areas, for example, how negative age stereotypes can be changed (see e.g. intervention study), in which domains the representation of older people may be increased on the internet (see avatar study) and whether some of the propagated ideas on ageism and older people are indeed true (see culture study and conservative values study). However, they also point to some areas of concern, namely that negative perceptions about older people start very early in children and that many of the environmental cues in nursing homes (e.g., malodour) may lead to greater infrahumanization of older people. Moreover, taking into account the results of Phase I of this project, policies must consider the possibility that age discrimination poses significant health risks for older people. Increased life expectancy does not necessarily mean a healthy life expectancy. Adverse effects of contextual variables, i.e. both socio-economic (e.g., national wealth) and socio-psychological (e.g., perceived status of older people in society) factors, on health in later life could constitute an additional financial burden for countries. There are many ways of how these issues could be tackled. For example, social and health interventions could focus on improving the way older patients´ health problems are understood and treated. Practitioners could take special care to avoid the use of negative age stereotypes. For more information on the project and the results, see www.eurage.com and www.melanie-vauclair.com .

Data: CORDIS, © European Union