Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin· 2013Q1
Act Your (Old) Age
- 189citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2013year
Short summary
Younger adults most strongly enforce prescriptive stereotypes for older adults, rewarding adherence and punishing violations, suggesting a shift from pity to active judgment.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Introduces prescriptive stereotypes for older adults, focusing on active succession and avoidance of consumption.
- Younger raters showed the strongest resentment towards older adults violating prescriptive stereotypes.
- Younger participants were most polarized in their reactions, rewarding adherence and punishing violations.
- Findings suggest older adults may shift from receiving pity to facing prescriptive resentment or reward.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Perspectives on ageism have focused on descriptive stereotypes concerning what older people allegedly are. By contrast, we introduce prescriptive stereotypes that attempt to control how older people should be: encouraging active Succession of envied resources, preventing passive Consumption of shared resources, and avoidance of symbolic, ingroup identity resources. Six studies test these domains, utilizing vignette experiments and simulated behavioral interactions. Across studies, younger (compared with middle-aged and older) raters most resented elder violators of prescriptive stereotypes. Moreover, these younger participants were most polarized toward older targets (compared with middle-aged and younger analogues)--rewarding elders most for prescription adherences and punishing them most for violations. Taken together, these findings offer a novel approach to ageist prescriptions, which disproportionately target older people, are most endorsed by younger people, and suggest how elders shift from receiving the default prejudice of pity to either prescriptive resentment or reward.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2013 · DOI ↗
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Field: Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
Neuropsychology and Physiological PsychologyPsychology