Exploring Ageism: Are We All Guilty of Age Bias?

Imagine standing before rows of birthday cards, trying to find one for an elderly friend. Many of those cards likely include disrespectful humor or irreverence about attributes and behaviors related to becoming old.

Such minor but potentially detrimental forms of ageism routinely encountered by older adults are referred to as everyday ageism, meaning “brief verbal, nonverbal, and environmental indignities that convey hostility, a lack of value, or narrow stereotypes of older adults” (Allen et al., 2022, p. 2). We can make light of aging challenges, but they may not be so amusing for those with age-related issues or limitations. According to researchers, everyday ageism may also affect the well-being and health of older adults (Allen et al., 2022).

Generational Biases and Ageism in the Elderly

Interestingly, the elderly may be more prone than younger people to stereotype their age group. A study of elderly stereotyping found that elderly adults reported more stereotypes of the elderly than did groups of middle-aged and young adults (Hummert et al., 1994).

Regardless, the different age groups in the study demonstrated agreement on negative elderly adult trait clusters including: “severely impaired” (forgetful, slow-thinking, incompetent, rambling, feeble, incoherent, inarticulate, senile); “despondent” (depressed, hopeless, sick, neglected, sad, afraid, victimized); “shrew/curmudgeon” (bored, complaining, ill-tempered, bitter, hypochondriac); and, “recluse” (poor, timid, sedentary) (Hummert et al., 1994).

Young participants in the study included a “vulnerable” cluster of elderly traits (afraid, worried, victimized, hypochondriac, wary, bored, sedentary, emotionless, miserly), and the elderly participants included “mildly impaired” (neglected, tired, forgetful, rambling, fragile, slow-moving, sick, dependent, sedentary, victimized, poor), “self-centered” (greedy, miserly, snobbish, emotionless, humorless), and “elitist” (demanding, prejudiced, wary, snobbish, naïve).

Older adults may endure micro-aggressions toward their age group due to the human tendency to distort one’s perception of age. Whereas some people feel young at 75 or 45, others feel old, as though their lives are nearly over. In a study of 502,548 individuals aged 10 to 89, researchers examined aging perceptions, finding that older adults reported feeling older and being perceived as older, yet these perceptions were younger than their current age (Chopik, et al., 2018).

The researchers concluded that a shift toward affiliating with youth happens more as people age. This occurs for several reasons, but primarily due to individuals experiencing negative emotions about their age group and dissociating with their own stigmatized age group (Chopik, et al., 2018; Weiss & Lang 2012).

Future Time Perspective

A stereotype of elderly people involves an assumption that they are preoccupied with the past. On the contrary, elderly people are more likely to focus on the future, having hopes and dreams despite their limited longevity. In fact, a future-time perspective was found to occur more frequently in older adults than in younger people (Gardner & Ascoli, 2015). That is, older adults are more likely than younger ones to imagine future possibilities rather than past experiences.

However, memory of the past and imaginings of the future occur with less episodic detail in the elderly than in younger adults; memory distortions occur where elements of prior experience are confused (Schacter et al., 2013). Since normal aging is associated with a decline in various aspects of episodic memory, researchers speculated that age-related changes in remembered past events would extend to imaginary future events (Schacter et al., 2013).

Findings reflected reduced episodic content (internal details) and increased semantic and conceptual information (external details) comprising older adults’ past and future events. Thus, when simulating alternative future scenarios, the constructive nature of memory enables past information to be used flexibly, which may also result in vulnerability to memory distortions (Schacter et al., 2013)

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Although imagining future events may serve as an adaptive coping mechanism, future event simulation in the elderly is also prone to errors and illusions (Schacter, 2012). One author, Caroline Leavitt (2024), writes about her mother, at age 93, finding a man named Walter who became the love of her life. At age 98, as her mother began to show signs of dementia, she was moved to assisted living, where Walter visited her until he was also moved to a memory care unit. Nevertheless, her mother believed she and Walter were still together, claiming, “I just put on fresh sheets for Walter… pointing to her bed, winking—even though the only bed he’d be in was his own” (Leavitt, 2024, p. 31).

As a subset of episodic memory, prospective memory aligns with hope as a pathway for our thoughts about the future, providing a sense of agency and motivation to reach goals (Snyder, Irving, & Anderson, 1991). Hope involves mental time travel that can structure our lives in anticipation of the future; it can influence our present state of mind and alter behaviors.

Although hope lacks the immediacy and intensity of reflexive emotions, it can shape one’s outlook on life based on memories of previous experiences. Moreover, the role of hope has been explored as a coping resource against despair (Lazarus, 1999).

Given all the groups for which an “ism” might be used, perhaps ageism is tolerated since becoming elderly eventually and unavoidably applies to all of us. In that case, we are simply victims of time and reality.