Young Americans face more explicit ageist attitudes than do their older counterparts

What is it about?

Public and academic discourse on ageism focuses primarily on prejudices targeting older adults, implicitly assuming that this age group experiences the most age bias. Our research challenges this assumption in a large study surveying Americans’ explicit sentiments toward young, middle-aged, and older adults. Contrary to common expectations about the scope and nature of ageism, responses from two samples representative of the U.S. adult population suggests that Americans harbor the most favorable sentiments toward older adults, and the least favorable ones, toward young adults (see Figure below). Young adults were seen by some as energetic, smart, fun, and positive. However, they were overwhelmingly described with negative stereotypes such as lazy, entitled, spoiled, disrespectful, self-centered, and stupid. In contrast, many depicted older adults as kind, respectful, wise, experienced, and hard-working. This pattern held across a wide range of participant demographics: Men, women, Caucasians, racial minorities, people of higher social class, people of lower social class, conservatives, liberals, all expressed an explicit preference for older adults—particularly for people in their 80s and 90s. Furthermore, participants with high levels of social dominance orientation—a trait that relates to racism, sexism, and homophobia—expressed even less favorable sentiments toward young adults and even more favorable sentiments toward older adults. This latter finding suggests that this pattern of sentiments reflect a form of derogation of the young more than a benign preference for older adults. Importantly, two follow-up surveys show that lay participants were generally quite accurate at predicting these results, but social scientists were not. Social scientists tended to underestimate how negatively respondents viewed young adults and how positively they viewed older adults. Interestingly, the more expertise social scientists had in ageism, the more biased and inaccurate their forecasts were. This shows a rare case where academic expertise actually reduces one's ability to predict important facts about the phenomenon they study.

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Photo by Christopher Campbell on Unsplash

Photo by Christopher Campbell on Unsplash

Why is it important?

In a rapidly aging world with heightened concerns over older adults’ welfare, young adults also face increasing economic, social, political, and ecological hardships. The grim outlook of today's young has led some to advocate for more generational equity, whereby societies strive to ensure equal opportunities for all generations. However, this course of action depends partly on the goodwill of older generations, who hold significant economic and political power to drive the change needed. Thus, collective sentiments toward young adults could play a crucial role in shaping their future: Positive views could foster the empathy needed to support actions addressing their challenges, while negative views could lead to dismissing their struggles. In this context, our research uniquely documents the magnitude of ageist attitudes toward young people in contemporary society. These findings underscore the need for policymakers and social scientists to broaden their understanding of age biases and develop theories and policies that address discrimination against all age groups.

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