Ageism
Ageism[1][2][3] is a bias against, discrimination towards, or bullying of individuals and groups on the basis of their age. The term was coined in 1969 by Robert Neil Butler to describe discrimination against the elderly, patterned on the terminology of sexism and racism.[4] Butler defined ageism as a combination of three connected elements: negative attitudes towards old age and the aging process, discriminatory practices against older people, and institutional practices and policies that perpetuate stereotypes about elderly people.[5][6]
The term "ageism" has also been used to describe the oppression of younger people by older people. An example of this is in a 1976 pamphlet published by Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor, MI.[7] In the UK, councilor Richard Thomas pointed out that age discrimination works against younger as well as older people at a meeting of the Bracknell Forest Council in March 1983.[8] It has also been used in regards to prejudice and discrimination, especially against adolescents and children, such as denying them certain rights and privileges usually reserved for adults. These include the right to vote, run for political office, refuse medical treatment, and sign contracts.[9] This definition of ageism can also include ignoring the ideas and contributions of adolescents and children because they are considered "too young", or assuming that they should behave in certain ways because of their younger age. Ageism against the young also includes penalties, burdens, or requirements imposed exclusively (or to a greater degree) on young people than on older people, such as age-based military conscription.[10] In a youth-oriented society, however, older people bear a large proportion of age bias and discrimination. Older people themselves can be deeply ageist, having internalized a lifetime of negative stereotypes about aging.[11] Ageism is often attributed to fears of death and disability, with avoiding, segregating, and rejecting older people serving as coping mechanisms that allow people to avoid thinking about their own mortality.[12] The stigma and discrimination around the loss of physical or mental capacity is actually ableism (not ageism), and aging is lifelong. Like other forms of bias, ageism is not based in biology but is instead socially constructed.
Classification[edit]
[edit]
Ageism in common linguistic and age studies usually refers to negative discriminatory practices against old people, people in their middle years, teenagers, and children. There are several forms of age-related bias. Adultism is a predisposition towards adults, which is seen as bias against children, youth, and all young people who are not addressed or viewed as adults.[13] This includes political candidacies, jobs, and cultural settings where the supposed greater vitality and physical beauty of youth is more appreciated than the supposed greater moral and intellectual rigor of adulthood. Adultcentrism is the exaggerated egocentrism of adults.[14] Adultocracy is the social convention which defines "maturity" and "immaturity", placing adults in a dominant position over young people, both theoretically and practically.[15] Gerontocracy is a form of oligarchical rule in which an entity is ruled by leaders who are significantly older than most of the adult population.[16] Chronocentrism is primarily the belief that a certain state of humanity is superior to all previous and/or future times.[17]
Based on a conceptual analysis of ageism, a new definition of ageism was introduced by Iversen, Larsen, and Solem in 2009. This definition constitutes the foundation for higher reliability and validity in future research about ageism and its complexity offers a new way of systemizing theories on ageism: "Ageism is defined as negative or positive stereotypes, prejudice and/or discrimination against (or to the advantage of) elderly people on the basis of their chronological age or on the basis of a perception of them as being 'old' or 'elderly'. Ageism can be implicit or explicit and can be expressed on a micro-, meso- or macro-level" (Iversen, Larsen and Solem, 2009).[18]
Other conditions of fear or aversion associated with age groups have their own names. Paedophobia is a fear of infants and children, ephebiphobia is the fear of youth [19] and is also referred to as an irrational fear of adolescents or a prejudice against teenagers,[20] and gerontophobia is a fear of elderly people.[21]
Implicit ageism[edit]
Implicit ageism refers to thoughts, feelings, and judgments that operate without conscious awareness and are automatically produced in everyday life.[22] These may be a mixture of positive and negative thoughts and feelings, but gerontologist Becca Levy reports that they "tend to be mostly negative".[23]
Stereotyping[edit]
Stereotyping is a tool of cognition that involves categorizing into groups and attributing characteristics to these groups. Stereotypes are necessary for processing huge volumes of information which would otherwise overload a person, and are generally accurate descriptors of group characteristics, though some stereotypes are inaccurate.[24] However, they can cause harm when the content of the stereotype is incorrect with respect to most of the group or where a stereotype is so strongly held that it overrides evidence which shows that an individual does not conform to it. For example, age-based stereotypes prime one to draw very different conclusions when one sees an older and a younger adult with, for example, back pain or a limp.[25] One might well assume that the younger person's condition is temporary and treatable, following an accident, while the older person's condition is chronic and less susceptible to intervention. On average, this might be true, but many people of old age have accidents and recover quickly, and very young people (such as infants, toddlers, and small children) can become permanently disabled in the same situation. This assumption may have no consequence if one makes it in while passing someone on the street, but if held by a health professional offering treatment or managers thinking about occupational health, such an assumption could inappropriately influence their actions and lead to age-related discrimination.
Managers have been accused, by Erdman Palmore, of stereotyping older workers as being resistant to change, not creative, cautious, slow to make judgments, lower in physical capacity, uninterested in technological change, and difficult to train.[26] Another example is when people are rude to children because of their high-pitched voices, even if they are kind and courteous. A review of the research literature related to age stereotypes in the workplace was published in 2009 in the Journal of Management.[27]
Contrary to common and more obvious forms of stereotyping, such as racism and sexism, ageism is more resistant to change. For instance, if a child believes in an ageist idea against the elderly, fewer people correct them, and, as a result, individuals grow up believing in ageist ideas, even elders themselves.[28] In other words, ageism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ageist beliefs against the elderly are commonplace in today's society. For example, an older person who forgets something could be quick to call it a "senior moment", failing to realize the ageism of that statement. People also often utter ageist phrases such as "dirty old man" or "second childhood", and elders sometimes miss the ageist undertones.[28]
In a study in 1994, researchers analyzed the effects of ageism among the elderly.[29] They performed memory tests on three selected groups: residents of China, deaf North Americans, and hearing North Americans. In the three groups, the Chinese residents were presumably the least exposed to ageism, with lifelong experience in a culture that traditionally venerates older generations. Lifelong deaf North Americans also faced less exposure to ageism in contrast to those with typical hearing, who presumably had heard ageist comments throughout the course of their lives. The results of the memory tests showed that ageism has significant effects on memory.
The gap in the scores between the young and old North Americans with normal hearing was double those of the deaf North Americans and five times wider than those of the Chinese participants. The results show that ageism undermines ability through its self-fulfilling nature.[28] The study was investigating the effect of the stereotype threat, which has been explored as a possible reason for memory deficits,[30] though the stereotype threat has been criticized.[31]
On the other hand, when elders show greater independence and control in their lives, defying ageist presumptions, they are more likely to be healthier, both mentally and physically, than other people of similar age.[28]
Research indicates that older people are stereotyped as scoring lower on measures of impulsivity, activism, antagonism and openness while younger people are stereotyped as scoring higher on these measures. This was found to be universal across cultures and was also found to be reasonably accurate (varying depending on how the accuracy was assessed and the type of stereotype), though differences were consistently exaggerated.[32]
However, as of 2020, there is still little research on the social status of elders across cultures.[6]
Ageism can also manifests itself in perceptions of how dateable one is, which has culminated in terms such as the sexpiration date, which indicates the age after which one is no longer sexually appealing.[33]
Prejudice[edit]
Ageist prejudice is often linked to the cognitive process of stereotyping. It can involve the expression of derogatory attitudes, which may lead to the use of discriminatory behaviour. For example, when older or younger contestants are rejected on the belief that they are poor performers, it could be the result of stereotyping. However, older people were also voted for in a game where it made sense to target the best performers. This can only be explained by a subconscious emotional reaction to older people. In this case, the prejudice took the form of distaste and a desire to exclude oneself from the company of older people.[34]
Stereotyping and prejudice against different groups in society do not take the same form. Age-based prejudice and stereotyping usually involve older or younger people being pitied, marginalized, or patronized. This is described as "benevolent prejudice" because the tendency to pity is linked to seeing older or younger people as "friendly" but "incompetent". Age Concern's survey revealed strong evidence of "benevolent prejudice". In the survey, 48% of participants said that people above 70 years of age were viewed as friendly (compared to 27% who said the same about under-30s). Meanwhile, only 26% believe over-70s are viewed as capable (with 41% saying the same about under-30s).[35]
Digital ageism[edit]
Digital ageism refers to the prejudices faced by older adults in the digital world. A few examples of the subtle ways in which digital ageism operates in cultural representations, research, and everyday life: Generational segregation naturalizes youth as digitally adept and the old as digital dunces. There is no empirical evidence for a digital divide between older and younger people, with the former never and the latter always capable of using digital media; a far more accurate description is that of a digital spectrum.[36][37][38] The reason for the myth of declining capabilities of older people could be that many cultural representations have long histories reproducing images of the life cycle as a mountain, where we peak in middle age then decline.[37][39][40] Older adults' experiences are often excluded from research agendas on digital media, and ageism is ensconced within disciplines such as mass communication studies. For example, in a media diffusionist perspective,[41] the practices of seniors are depicted as either negligible or lagging, and the equation of diffusion with individual ownership can hide practical 'workarounds' such as cell phone sharing or missed calls used by older couples on fixed incomes.[42][43]
Ageism in statistics[edit]
Ageism is also inadvertently embedded in the ways statistics are collected. For example, data collected based on large age categories (e.g., '60+') foisting anyone over 60 into 'the grey zone' which obscures differences.[44] The dependency ratio has been criticized by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights as being based on the ageist assumption that older people are always dependent on care from younger workers.[45]
Visual ageism[edit]
The term visual ageism was coined in 2018 by Loos and Ivan. They define visual ageism as "the social practice of visually underrepresenting older people or misrepresenting them in a prejudiced way".[46] We are facing a shift from visual ageism characterized by underrepresentation and the negative representation of older people to a representation of older age characterized by images of stereotypically third age older adults (enjoying life and living their "golden years"), while older adults in their fourth age (inactive and unable to live independently) remain invisible. A review of empirical studies conducted since 1950 in Europe and North America[46] reveals that print and television advertisements started the transition towards a more positive visual representation of older adults in their age during the last decade of the 20th century, followed by television programs a few years later, while older adults in their fourth age remain invisible.
This is probably due to the increase in third-age rhetoric in the media, picturing older people as healthy and as potential consumers, enjoying life and living their golden years. Media representations of older people have moved from visual under- and misrepresentation (negative images)[47][48][49][50] to more positive depictions.[51][52][46] Today, visual ageism in the media tends to come wrapped in the guise of the positive attributes of third age representations of older people, while adults in their fourth age continue to be underrepresented. One possible explanation for this is that healthy third agers might prefer not to be associated with fourth agers, as they remind them too starkly of what lies ahead in their own near future. Although this discomfort or even fear about mortality is undeniably common, from a societal point of view this kind of (self)ageism is hurtful to fourth agers as a group and in a sense to third agers as well, as they risk becoming fourth agers themselves one day.[46]