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Abstract
Guided by theoretical models, this research examines (for the first time within the same design) young American adults' reports of age stereotypes, norms of respect, beliefs about intra‐ and intergenerational communication, and communication satisfaction toward young adult, middle‐aged, and older adult targets. Multivariate analyses showed that as age of target increased so did trait attributions of benevolence, norms of politeness and deference, and communicative respect and satisfaction; however, attributions of personal vitality decreased linearly. Path analyses revealed that the more young adults stereotyped older adults as benevolent and personally vital, the less likely they were to report avoiding communication with them. Deference norms also positively related to the degree of communicative respect afforded older adults and the more respondents reported avoiding communication with them, the less satisfied they were with their intergenerational conversations.
Notes
[1] Age ranges were relatively large. Because certain age reports seemed outside typical ranges, the age group variables were converted to z‐scores to determine outliers. Age reports greater than three standard deviations from the mean were deleted from the original dataset (n = 140). Three cases were deleted creating the current sample size of 137 participants.
[2] Given the number of age targets to be rated on an extensive array of items, our focus was only on perceptions of self communicating to others and not also (as in prior studies) perceptions of others communicating to self.
[3] Though not of theoretical interest in the present analysis, gender was included in the model. No significant interactions between target age and gender were revealed but several main effects were found. In sum, multivariate effects were found for only communication behaviors and stereotypes, yet univariate tests showed significant gender effects for both communication satisfaction items, avoidance, benevolence, vitality, and politeness. Means show that females reported greater enjoyment, satisfaction, benevolence, vitality, politeness, and lower avoidance.
[4] All multivariate tests violated the sphericity assumption as indicated by Mauchley's test. The more conservative estimates of F‐values, p‐values, and eta‐squared terms were used, although these were often identical to the estimates for when sphericity was assumed.
[5] We had no expectation, nor rationale for thinking, that age stereotypes and norms of respect would be relevant to predicting beliefs about communicating with middle‐aged people or other younger people. Indeed, path analyses conducted on these two younger samples had less than acceptable fits. Given only the model for older adult targets had an acceptable fit for these young adult respondents, it is not unreasonable to suggest that different variables are influential in same‐aged peer interactions and those with middle‐aged individuals. Because the reliability of the two communication items were sufficiently high for the elderly adults age group (alpha = .774), the items were combined into an overall score for these path analyses.
