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Children's
Stereotypes of Aging Starts Early
EurekAlert April 22, 2003
Children as young as five years old have negative stereotypes of older people, according to new research from the University of Alberta. Dr. Sheree Kwong See, a researcher from the Department of Psychology, recently conducted a study addressing when age stereotypes develop and found that they have an early start. Kwong See used a
simple behavioral task, using two experimenters: a younger woman in her
20s and an older woman in her 70s. The experiment meant five-year-olds
were asked if two aligned rows of objects have the same number or if one
has more. After the child agrees that the lines are the same the
experimenter transforms one of the lines so that is longer and the child
is asked the same question again. When the younger
experimenter asked the second question--when the line was lengthened but
the numbers were the same--a high percentage of children changed the
responses, suggesting the children reason that the young woman is in the
know and is searching for a different answer. When asked by the older
experimenter, the children reason that she is duped by the transformation
and is legitimately asking if the lines still have the same number. "To enlighten
the older experimenter, children themselves then focus their answers on
number," said Kwong See, who heard further anecdotal evidence from
the children who said an older person might be confused. "They think,
'this older person is incompetent and needs me to explain things.' But
when the younger one asks the question, the child thinks 'she knows what
she is talking about so I'll try to give her a different answer the second
time around.'" This new technique
used an indirect way to see how children treat people of different ages
and Kwong See found a significant difference in the way they interacted
with the young and old. "This task is a behavior measure which tells
us something the children are inferring. And we found that at age five,
there already is a stereotype." Kwong See has
already shown that older people buy into stereotypes and end up believing
they cannot do something as well as a younger person just because they've
heard it so often. Fostering a more realistic and balanced view of aging
is evidently more crucial at a young age, says Kwong See, to break down
the negative and often incorrect beliefs about the elderly. This research has been presented at the Gerontological Society of America conference. Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging |
