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Ageism
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Ageism refers to the stereotyping of and discrimination against individuals or groups because of their age. It is a set of beliefs, attitudes, norms, and values used to justify age based prejudice and discrimination. This may be casual or systematic.
The term was coined in 1969 by US gerontologist Robert N. Butler to describe discrimination against seniors, and patterned on sexism and racism. Butler defined ageism as a combination of three connected elements.
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Ageism refers to the stereotyping of and discrimination against individuals or groups because of their age. It is a set of beliefs, attitudes, norms, and values used to justify age based prejudice and discrimination. This may be casual or systematic.
The term was coined in 1969 by US gerontologist Robert N. Butler to describe discrimination against seniors, and patterned on sexism and racism. Butler defined ageism as a combination of three connected elements. Among them were prejudicial attitudes towards older people, old age, and the aging process; discriminatory practices against older people; and institutional practices and policies that perpetuate stereotypes about older people The term has also been used to describe prejudice and discrimination against teens and children, including ignoring their ideas because they are too young, or assuming that they should behave in certain ways because of their age.
Ageism commonly refers to negative discriminatory practices, regardless of the age towards which it is applied. There are several subsidiary forms of ageism. Adultism is a predisposition towards adults, which is seen as biased against children, youth, and all young people who are not addressed or viewed as adults.Jeunism is the discrimination against older people in favor of younger ones. This includes political candidacies, commercial functions, and cultural settings where the supposed greater vitality and/or physical beauty of youth is more appreciated than the supposed greater moral and/or intellectual rigor of adulthood. Adultcentricism is the "exaggerated egocentrism of adults." Adultocracy is the social convention which defines "maturity" and "immaturity," placing adults in a dominant position over young people, both theoretically and practically. 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. Chronocentrism is primarily the belief that a certain state of humanity is superior to all previous and/or future times.
Ageism may also lead to the development of fears towards certain age groups, particularly: Pedophobia, the fear of infants and children; Ephebiphobia, the fear of youth.; and Gerontophobia, the fear of elderly people.
Forms and manifestations of ageism
There are several forms of ageism which fall under two general categories: prejudicial ageism, or the negative stereotyping of people on the basis of age, and discriminatory ageism, or denying people opportunities on the basis of age.
Implicit ageism
Implicit ageism is the term used to refer to the implicit or unconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors one has about older people. These may be a mixture of positive and negative thoughts and feelings, but gerontologist Becca Levy reports that they “tend to be mostly negative.”
One way that implicit or explicit ageism may manifest is through the use of patronizing language with older people. The term "patronizing language" specifically describes two negative methods of communication: overaccommodation, which consists of a person being excessively courteous and speaking simple and short sentences very loudly and slowly to an older person, with an exaggerated tone and high pitch; and baby talk, which involves practically the same uncomplicated speech with an exaggerated pitch and tone that one uses when talking to a baby, differing in the content of the speech. These tend to downplay the serious and thoughtful contributions of older persons to society, while reinforcing a negative image of them as dependent people with declines in intellect, cognitive and physical performance, and other areas required for autonomous, daily functioning. People who engage in this type of speech treat older members of society as if they have regressed to an infantile state. While patronizing language is perceived by some older people to be soothing, most higher-functioning older people think it is degrading and disrespectful.
Ageist stereotyping
Ageist stereotyping is a tool of cognition which 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 they are often based on a "grain of truth" (for example, the association between aging and ill health). However, they 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. Stereotypes are used to interpret the world around us. For example, age-based stereotypes prime one to draw very different conclusions when one sees an older and a younger adult with, say, back pain or a limp. 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 plenty of older people have accidents and recover quickly. This assumption may have no consequence if one makes it in the blink of an eye as one is passing someone in the street, but if it is held by a health professional offering treatment or managers thinking about occupational health, it could inappropriately influence their actions and lead to age-related discrimination.
Ageist prejudice
Ageist prejudice is a type of emotion which is often linked to the cognitive process of stereotyping. It can involve the expression of derogatory attitudes, which may then lead to the use of discriminatory behavior. The Weakest Link example (see below) helps to explain the difference between stereotyping and prejudice. Where older contestants were rejected in the belief that they were poor performers, this could well be the result of stereotyping. But older people were also voted for at the stage in the 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.
Benevolent prejudice
Stereotyping and prejudice against different groups in society does not take the same form. Age-based prejudice and stereotyping usually involves older people being pitied, marginalized, or patronized. This is described as "benevolent prejudice" because the tendency to pity is linked to seeing older people as "friendly" but "incompetent." This is similar to the prejudice most often directed against women and disabled people. Age Concern’s survey revealed strong evidence of "benevolent prejudice." 48% said that over-70s are 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).
Hostile prejudice
"Hostile prejudice" based on hatred, fear, or threat (which often characterizes attitudes linked to race, religion, and sexual orientation) is less common with respect to the elderly, though is very common with respect to youth. But there are examples, including excessive rhetoric regarding intergenerational competition, and violence against vulnerable older people, which can be motivated by subconscious hostility or fear. Equality campaigners are often wary of drawing comparisons between different forms of inequality. But it is unquestionably true that abuse and neglect experienced by vulnerable older people (which is closely linked to hostile prejudice) kills more people each year than the shocking but relatively isolated cases of public violence motivated by race, religion, or sexual orientation.
The impact of "benevolent" and "hostile" prejudice can be equally severe but tends to be different. The warmth felt towards older people means there is often public acceptance that they are deserving of preferential treatment--for example, concessionary travel. But the perception of incompetence means older people can be seen as "not up to the job" or "a menace on the roads," when there is no evidence to support this. Benevolent prejudice also leads to assumptions that it is "natural" for older people to have lower expectations, reduced choice and control, and less account taken of their views.
Discrimination
Age discrimination refers to the actions taken to deny or limit opportunities to people on the basis of age. These are usually actions taken as a result of one’s ageist beliefs and attitudes. Age discrimination occurs on both a personal and institutional level.
On a personal level, an older person may be told that he or she is too old to engage in certain physical activities, like an informal game of basketball between friends and family, while a younger person may be told that he or she is too young to engage in certain social activities, like going to an unsupervised party.
On an institutional level, there are policies and regulations in place that limit opportunities to people of certain ages and deny them to all others. The law, for instance, requires that all young persons must be at least 16 years old in order to obtain a driver’s license in the United States. There are also government regulations that determine when a worker may retire. Presently, a worker must be 66 years and 2 months old before becoming eligible for normal retirement.
Ageism has significant effects in two particular sectors: employment and health care.
Employment
The concept of ageism was originally developed to refer to prejudice and discrimination against older people. Over time, this association between discrimination and old age has been expanded by evidence that suggests prejudice and discrimination in employment can occur to a worker of any age.
Like racial and gender discrimination, age discrimination, at least when it affects younger workers, can result in unequal pay for equal work. Unlike racial and gender discrimination, however, age discrimination in wages is often enshrined in law. For example, in both the United States and the United Kingdom minimum wage laws allow for employers to pay lower wages to young workers. Many state and local minimum wage laws mirror such an age-based, tiered minimum wage. Outside of the law, older workers, on average, make more than younger workers do. Firms may be afraid to offer older workers lower wages than they offer to younger workers.
Therefore, younger workers may face more statistical discrimination from employers than older workers. Statistical discrimination refers to limiting the employment opportunities of an individual based on stereotypes of a group to which the person belongs. Limited employment opportunities could come in the form of lower pay for equal work or jobs with little social mobility. Younger female workers may be more statistically discriminated against than older female workers, for example, because it is socially expected that, as young women of childbearing years, they will need to leave the work force periodically to have children.
Labor regulations also limit the age at which people are allowed to work and how many hours and under what conditions they may work. In the United States, a person must generally be at least 14 years old to seek a job, and workers face additional restrictions on their work activities until they reach age 16. Many companies refuse to hire workers younger than 18.
Young workers over 18 may also have a hard time finding a white-collar job because the maximum age for some professional occupations is set as low as 30 by employers. After these workers finish obtaining the necessary professional degrees, they may have only a few years, at most, to get into a position without being too old. The upward mobility in these same jobs starts to diminish once the workers reach the age of 40. A worker who gets a job at age 30 may only work about ten years before his chances of promotion begin to dwindle.
While older workers benefit more from higher wages than do younger workers, they face barriers in promotions and hiring. Employers may also encourage early retirement or layoffs disproportionately more for older or more experienced workers.
Age discrimination in hiring has been shown to exist in the United States. Joanna Lahey, economics professor at Texas A&M University, found that firms are more than 40% more likely to interview a younger job applicant than an older job applicant.
In a survey for the University of Kent, England, 29% of respondents stated that they had suffered from age discrimination. This is a higher proportion than for gender or racial discrimination. Dominic Abrams, social psychology professor at the university, concluded that ageism is the most pervasive form of prejudice experienced in the UK population.
According to Dr. Bob McCann, an associate professor of management communication at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, denigrating older workers, even if only subtly, can have an outsized negative impact on employee productivity and corporate profits. For American corporations, age discrimination can lead to significant expenses. In Fiscal Year 2006, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received nearly 17,000 charges of age discrimination, resolving more than 14,000 and recovering $51.5 million in monetary benefits. Costs from lawsuit settlements and judgments can run into the millions, most notably with the $250 million paid by the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) under a settlement agreement in 2003.
Healthcare
There is considerable evidence of discrimination against the elderly in health care. This is particularly true for aspects of the physician-patient interaction, such as screening procedures, information exchanges, and treatment decisions. In the patient-physician interaction, physicians and other health care providers may hold attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that are associated with ageism against older patients. Studies have found that physicians often do not seem to show any care or concern toward treating the medical problems of older people. They are trained, as medical students, to handle the treatment of such individuals with indifference or apathy. Then, when actually interacting with these older patients on the job, the doctors sometimes view them with disgust and describe them in negative ways, such as "depressing" or "crazy." For screening procedures, elderly people are less likely than younger people to be screened for cancers and, due to the lack of this preventative measure, less likely to be diagnosed at early stages of their conditions.
After being diagnosed with a disease that may be potentially curable, older people are further discriminated against. Though there may be surgeries or operations with high survival rates that might cure their condition, older patients are less likely than younger patients to receive all the necessary treatments. It has been posited that this is because doctors fear their older patients are not physically strong enough to tolerate the curative treatments and are more likely to have complications during surgery that may end in mortality. However, other studies have been done with patients who had heart disease, and, in these cases, the older patients were still less likely to receive further tests or treatments, independent of the severity of their health problems. Thus, the approach to the treatment of older people is concentrated on managing the disease rather than preventing or curing it. This is based on the stereotype that it is the natural process of aging for the quality of health to decrease, and, therefore, there is no point in attempting to prevent the inevitable decline of old age.
Such differential medical treatment of elderly people can have significant effects on their health outcomes.
Effects of ageism
Ageism has significant effects on the elderly. The stereotypes and infantilization of older people by patronizing language affects older people’s self-esteem and behaviors. After repeatedly hearing a stereotype that older people are useless, older people may begin to feel like dependent, non-contributing members of society. They may start to perceive themselves in terms of the looking-glass self--that is, in the same ways that others in society see them. Studies have also specifically shown that when older people hear these stereotypes about their supposed incompetence and uselessness, they perform worse on measures of competence and memory. But, many overcome these stereotypes and live the way they want. These stereotypes then become self-fulfilling prophecies. Older people may also engage in self-stereotypes, or taking their culture’s age stereotypes to which they have been exposed over the life course and directing them inward toward themselves. Then this behavior reinforces the present stereotypes and treatment of the elderly.
Measuring ageism
It is very difficult to measure ageism. Very few studies have been conducted on the topic, and those that have tend to leave out some forms of ageism, such as implicit ageism and self-stereotyped ageism. These two forms are particularly hard to conceptualize. Of the studies that have attempted to measure the concept of ageism, many have been met with significant scrutiny because there are several factors, such as the social desirability bias, that may cloud the data.
In Freakonomics, Stephen Levitt’s surprise hit of 2005, the study of hidden (or "implicit") ageism was brought out of the psychologist’s laboratory and into the TV studio. Levitt described how, in the US version of The Weakest Link, contestants’ voting decisions were, on average, biased against older panelists. At the stage of the game where it is in participants’ interests to vote for poor performers, older people were likely to be chosen even when younger adults had performed worse. But when contestants would benefit by choosing top-performing rivals (to eliminate the competition), they tended to choose lower-performing, older contestants. Subconsciously, the panelists simply did not want to be around older people.
Government responses to ageism
In the US, each state may have its own laws regarding age discrimination. In California, the Fair Employment and Housing Act permits discrimination against persons under the age of 40. The FEHA is the principal California statute prohibiting employment discrimination, covering employers, labor organizations, employment agencies, apprenticeship programs and/or any person or entity who aids, abets, incites, compels, or coerces the doing of a discriminatory act. In addition to age, it prohibits employment discrimination based on race or color; religion; national origin or ancestry, physical disability; mental disability or medical condition; marital status; sex or sexual orientation; and pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.
The federal government governs age discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA). The ADEA prohibits employment discrimination based on age with respect to employees 40 years of age or older as well. The ADEA also addresses the difficulty older workers face in obtaining new employment after being displaced from their jobs, arbitrary age limits. The ADEA applies even if some of the minimum 20 employees are overseas and working for a US corporation.
The United States federal government has responded to issues of ageism in governance through several measures in the past. They include the creation of the 1970s-era National Commission on Resources for Youth, which was created in the late 1960s as to promote youth participation throughout communities. Recently the federal government implemented the Tom Osborne Federal Youth Coordination Act, aiming to curb redundancy among federal service providers to youth.
Other countries that have laws addressing ageism include Australia, Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.
Advocacy campaigns
Many current and historical intergenerational and youth programs have been created to address the issue of ageism. Among the advocacy organizations created in the United Kingdom to challenge age discrimination are Age Concern, the British Youth Council and Help the Aged.
In the United States there have been several historic and current efforts to challenge ageism. The earliest example may be the Newsboys Strike of 1899, which fought ageist employment practices targeted against youth by large newspaper syndicates in the Northeast. During the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was active in the national youth movement, including the formation of the National Youth Administration and the defense of the American Youth Congress. She made several statements on behalf of youth and against ageism. In one report entitled, "Facing the Problems of Youth," Roosevelt said of youth,
- "We cannot simply expect them to say, 'Our older people have had experience and they have proved to themselves certain things, therefore they are right.' That isn't the way the best kind of young people think. They want to experience for themselves. I find they are perfectly willing to talk to older people, but they don't want to talk to older people who are shocked by their ideas, nor do they want to talk to older people who are not realistic."
Students for a Democratic Society formed in 1960 to promote democratic opportunities for all people regardless of age, and the Gray Panthers was formed in the early 1970s with a goal of eliminating ageism in all forms. Three O'Clock Lobby formed in 1976 to promote youth participation throughout traditionally ageist government structures in Michigan, while Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor started in 1970 to promote youth and fight ageism.
More recent U.S. programs include Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions, which formed in 1996 to advance the civil and human rights of young people through eliminating ageist laws targeted against young people, and to help youth counter ageism in America. The National Youth Rights Association started in 1998 to promote awareness of the legal and human rights of young people in the United States, and the Freechild Project was formed in 2001 to identify, unify and promote diverse opportunities for youth engagement in social change by fighting ageism.
Related campaigns
- In 2002 the Writers Guild of America, West has waged a legal battle within the entertainment industry to eliminate age discrimination commonly faced by elder scriptwriters.
- Director Paul Weitz reported he wrote the 2004 film, In Good Company to reveal how ageism affects youth and adults.
- In 2002 The Freechild Project created an information and training initiative to provide resources to youth organizations and schools focused on youth rights.
Accusations of ageism
In a recent interview, actor Pierce Brosnan cited ageism as one of the contributing factors as to why he was not asked to continue his role as James Bond in the Bond film Casino Royale, released in 2006.
Also, successful singer and actress, Madonna argued in the 2008 press about societies negative view on ageism, and her fight to defy the norms that have already been set. Madonna, who is in her 50s is defiant against younger generations set opinions.
Had John McCain succeeded in his 2008 campaign for President, he would have been the oldest President in American history. Discussions about his age dogged McCain during his failed run, and whether or not the criticism of McCain qualified as unfair 'ageist' allegations or legitimate points of view was hotly debated. McCain himself has frequently made fun of the criticisms, in one instance pretending to fall asleep when asked about his age.
A 2007 Pew Research Center study found that a plurality of American voters would be less likely to vote for a President past a given age, with only 45% saying that age would not matter.
See also
External links
- Thematic journal issue devoted to empirical and theoretical research on ageism.
- EU-OSHA
- Detailed report on ageism from the International Longevity Center.
- Edited scholarly volume of the latest research and theory on Ageism.
- .
- An essay against ageism towards teenagers, written by a Canadian adolescent.
- A Knol examining ageism and social attitudes against different age groups.
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Further reading
- Kimmel, D.C. (1988). Ageism, psychology, and public policy. American Psychologist, 43(3), 175-178.
- Kite, M.E., & Johnson, B.T. (1988). Attitudes towards older and younger adults: A meta-analysis. Psychology and Aging, 3(3), 232-244.
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