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The Activation of Aging Stereotypes in Younger and Older Adults

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
² Department of Psychology and Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Address correspondence to Alison L. Chasteen, Department of Psychology, 100 St. George Street, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada. E-mail: chasteen{at}psych.utoronto.ca

The activation of ageism and aging stereotypes in younger and older adults was investigated by manipulating both the valence and the stereotypicality of trait stimuli. Participants completed a lexical decision task in which the stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) between the prime and target stimuli were varied to examine the effects of automatic and controlled processing (300 and 2,000 ms, respectively). Both younger and older adults demonstrated strong stereotype activation for elderly stereotypes but relatively weak activation for young stereotypes. Both younger and older adults also demonstrated a positive bias toward older people, which was not moderated by SOA. These findings suggest that younger and older adults do not differ in their accessibility to aging stereotypes or to their age-based biases, which appear to be positive toward elderly people.