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Disconfirmation of Person Expectations by Older and Younger Adults

Implications for Social Vigilance

^a Department of Psychology and Research Center for Group Dynamics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Oscar Ybarra, University of Michigan, Department of Psychology and Research Center for Group Dynamics, 525 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1109 E-mail: oybarra{at}umich.edu.

Decision Editor: Margie E. Lachman, PhD

The research examined whether age-related cognitive declines affect performance when people form impressions of others. The results from Experiment 1 showed that young and old participants who held positive expectancies about an individual spent more time processing and had better memory for information that was inconsistent rather than consistent with their expectancies. But participants who held negative expectancies tended to focus on information that was consistent rather than inconsistent with their expectancies. In Experiment 2 the task was made more demanding by limiting the amount of time participants had to form their impressions. Under these conditions, older participants who had positive expectations showed deficits in memory for negative information compared with young participants. As expected, both groups performed similarly when they held negative expectancies for the target. The results suggest that although both older and younger adults process social information similarly under self-paced conditions, older adults may be at a disadvantage processing negative information about positively characterized individuals when the context in which impression formation occurs is cognitively demanding.

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				S. C. Brown and D. C. Park Theoretical Models of Cognitive Aging and Implications for Translational Research in Medicine Gerontologist, March 1, 2003; 43(90001): 57 - 67. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]