Implicit Ageism and Age-Related Stereotypes Between the Old and Young.
IMPLICIT, AGE-RELATED STEREOTYPES BETWEEN THE OLD AND YOUNG.
Abstract:
This study examined the implicit and explicit stereotypes that first year Psychology students at the university of New South Wales have of young and old people. Each student completed an Implicit Association Test (IAT) using photographs of young and old people and matching them up to Bad-Good words such as (evil, joy, happy, failure). A random sample of the IAT tests were examined and recorded. Once the results had been calculated it was found that males had an average IAT score of 1.875 and females 1.784. This indicated that both males and females show a significantly higher explicit than implicit preference for old people and furthermore, have a strong to moderate automatic preference for young people.
"Certain stereotypes and myths have grown up in Western cultures in relation to old people and the roles that they play in our society". For a number of years, elderly people were seen by the younger population as dependant on others, unable to work and learn new skills and are withdrawn for any social life that they may have had previously. Even though several of these myths are dissolving and a more positive attitude towards the elderly is developing, many young people still accept these stereotypes. In 1998, Anthony Greenwald, McGhee and Jordan L.K. Schwartz created an Implicit Association Test, which provides a "flexible measure of the automatic associations, underlying implicit prejudices based on age."
University - aged subjects completed the IAT age test by visualizing a photo of either a young or old subject and corresponding that photo to the most appropriate word that describes them. There were two words to chose from, one was positive such as joy, happy, friend and the other word was negative for instance evil, failure, awful. Similarly, it is very important to note that, "The hallmark of implicit prejudice is that is operates with out individuals conscious awareness" therefore when the subjects completed the IAT the results are solely based on effortless, automatic association with both young and old people and not outside influential behavior.
Laurie Rudnman exemplifies how the IAT could be influenced due to prior exposure. Familiar stimuli tend to be preferred over unfamiliar stimuli and therefore would be remiss not to emphasize that "stimuli familiarity influences the IAT effects when stimuli are social". Therefore the results may not always be as accurate as they should be.
The aim of the present study, then, is to examine whether college-aged subjects still hold stereotypical views of elderly people and whether their automatic preference of age is old or young.
According to the previously reported findings of random IAT tests, it should be found that, both males and females show statistically significant higher explicit than implicit preference for elderly people. In addition, it should also demonstrate that, females show statistically significant higher feeling thermometer scores for both young and old people and it should further report that males and females prefer younger people to the elderly.
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The aim of the present study, then, is to examine whether college-aged subjects still hold stereotypical views of elderly people and whether their automatic preference of age is old or young.
According to the previously reported findings of random IAT tests, it should be found that, both males and females show statistically significant higher explicit than implicit preference for elderly people. In addition, it should also demonstrate that, females show statistically significant higher feeling thermometer scores for both young and old people and it should further report that males and females prefer younger people to the elderly.
Method:
Design:
The study used an Implicit Association Test to assess whether age-related stereotyping is evident in university-aged students. Both males and females IAT scores, comprised the levels of the dependant variable. Similarly, it was the pictures and Good-Bad which influenced these scores, that being the independent variables. Once the test was completed and examined, the results showed that one would either have strong, moderate or slight automatic preferences for young people, no preference or a slight, moderate or strong automatic preference for elderly people.
Participants:
University of New South Wales first year psychology students participated in the study. Participants were selected on the basis of tutorial class attendance and all tutorial classes participated. There were both males and females participants doing the IAT and the results were taken from a random sample from everyone who participated.
Materials:
The researcher provided a computer for every participant involved in the experiment. The Implicit Association Test was to complete on these computers. The IAT requires the participants to respond to various types of photographs of young and old subjects on the computer and correspond them to concrete nouns all ranging from 3-9 letters in length, using only two response keys. Positive and negative words and young and old looking people are continuously being matched together in order for the subject to respond appropriately.
Procedure:
Males and females were placed at individual computers in a psychology laboratory to complete the Implicit Association Test. To begin the test, the participant completed his or her name, their gender, an explicit preference that best describes them based from five statements and a rating of 0-10 on how cold or warm the participant feels towards both old and young people.
Once this was completed, the participant could begin.
The IAT requires individuals to respond to various photographs of young and old subjects on the computer and correspond them to concrete nouns all ranging from 3-9 letters in length, using only two response keys. There were two nouns to choose from to correspond to the photograph, one noun included a negative attribute and the other noun was positive. The participant repeated the experiment several times as the photographs of the young and old people were being coordinated with different concrete nouns after each round was completed. One round consisted of fifteen photographs and thirty nouns.
Once the test was completed, the participants IAT results are calculated. This calculation determines whether the participant has a preference for young or old people and level of intensity of their preference. One the test informs the participant of their score, they give the results to the researcher who will then take a random sample and calculate the results for both males and females in first year psychology.
Results:
The mean (%) correct scores and standard deviations (S.D) for males, females and both genders together are presented below.
Table 1: The mean and standard deviation for females, males and both genders for explicit-age preferences, old and young thermometer ratings, IAT scores and the age of the participants are calculated in the table below.
From table one it can be seen that both males and females show statistically significant higher explicit than implicit preference for old people. Furthermore it can also be seen that, females show a higher thermometer rating for both young and old people than males do even though the difference is fairly small.
Table two:
The correlations between variables for both males and females.
It can also be seen from table two that there is a negative correlation between explicit preferences and feeling scores for young people as well as negative correlations between feeling scores for old and young people for male participants. However there is a positive correlation between explicit preferences and feeling scores for old people and feeling scores for old and young people for the female's participants.
For the ageism IAT, the participants were expected to show longer latencies for tasks that combined old+ pleasant compared to tasks that combined young+ pleasant. Similarly for the stereotype IAT, subjects were expected to show longer latencies combining old + youthful traits compared to tasks combining young + youthful traits.
Discussion:
The results obtained in this study suggest that reliable links between stereotypes and prejudice may be found at an implicit level. Nonetheless, our measure of stereotyping included only negative balanced attributes for the elderly and positive attributes for the young.
This conclusion runs counter to the claims made by previous researcher (Wittenbrink et.al 1997), that positive attributes are associated with youth and negative attributes associated with the elderly.
Furthermore the experiment revealed that the participants possessed implicit pro-youth attitudes and stereotypes irrespective of reported familiarity differences for young versus old photographs.
One explanation as to why all the participants showed statistically significant higher explicit than implicit preferences for old people is because all the participants were of university age, therefore they could relate to young people more easily. Similarly, James S. Coleman who is the chairman on the panel of youth also explained that because the "youth have a preconception of what it is like to be old" and usually this is negative, whether or not they explicitly feel more positively towards the elderly their implicit thoughts are generally negative because of the surrounding stereotypes and myths the young have grown up around.
These results create mounting evidence for persuasive implicit stereotyping and prejudice. "This suggests a social reality in which automatic in-group favoritism may be an inescapable fact." (Fazion et.al 1997).
The inherent bias may best be offset be re-classifying out-group members as in-group members. Furthermore, irrespective of the specific approach, efforts to combat prejudice and stereotyping can only be improved through experiments such as the IAT test. This can be done by the use of assessment tools that are capable of measuring implicit attitudes and beliefs in a wide variety of domains. The present research, in tandem with the prior evidence listed above shows that the IAT effectively serves this need.
The Implicit Association Test's flexibility and generality affords researches the opportunity to expand prejudice and stereotype assessment to new horizons and to overcome to obvious limitations of self-report methods.
In conclusion, the results from the IAT tests clearly illustrates that it is an effective measure of implicit age-related attitudes and stereotypes when responded to by university-aged participants. It evidently shows that young people (slightly more males than females) implicitly stereotype old people in our society.
References:
-Burgess W. Ernest (1960). Aging in Western Societies.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 37
-Coleman S. James (1972). Youth Transition to Adulthood.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London
-Rudman A. Laurie (1999). Measuring The Automatic Components Of Prejudice: Flexibility and Generality Of The Implicit Association Test.
Social Cognition, Vol, 17 No 4, 1999, page 437-465.
-Jimenez. Luis and Mendez. Castor (2001). Implicit sequence learning with competing explicit cues.
The Quartly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54A (2), 345-350
-Johnston A. Robert. (1999). Best Face Forward: Similarity effects in repetition priming of face recognition.
The Quartly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54A (2), 383-396
