Negative Stereotypes In Older Adults

As adults get older, their risks for health complications, cognitive declines, and weakening of bodily functions increase. They have to face the stereotypes focusing on the loss of these functions. Some negative stereotypes portray older adults as incompetent, unattractive, and absent-minded. The problem is that there are negative attitudes that older adults encounter on a daily basis, whether it’s a friendly conversation or portrayal in the media. They even come across these stereotypes in health care situations, and at work. Because of society, older adults often tend to share and spread these negative ideologies about their age group. But, their self-esteem tends to suffer or diminish based on these stereotypes placed on them. They lose motivation and submit to these beliefs. So, how can older adults protect their self-esteem from these negative stereotypes? One way is differentiating themselves from their age group and from societal influences as a mechanism to help maintain their self-esteem when presented with negative stereotypes of their age group.
Older adults will be confronted with either negative-age related information or neutral information with no relation to age. They will be asked to create a list of similarities and differences between themselves and older individuals in general. This would be a 2 x 2 study, meaning negative age related vs. neutral, and similarities vs. differences (differentiation). The dependent variable would be self-esteem. Results should indicate that differentiation of oneself from their age group will moderate the impact of negative stereotypes on the self-esteem (both implicit and explicit) of older