Anti-old and anti-youth attitudes among older adults: focusing on middle-aged and old age identity

ABSTRACT

There is currently a lack of comprehensive scholarly information concerning the attitudes older people hold toward both older adults and the young. Using the social identity theory framework, this study investigated older identity issues including middle-aged identity and old age identity. We conducted an online survey of Japanese older participants (N = 301) and then implemented a Bayesian structural equation modeling to examine whether age and gender predicted middle-aged/old age identity in addition to whether middle-aged/old age identity predicted anti-old/anti-youth attitudes. Results showed the more strongly participants identified with being middle-aged the more positive their attitudes were toward old/young people, while they showed no significant relationship between old age identity and the attitudes. Regarding participant ages, the results found no significant relationship with middle-aged identity but a positive relationship with old age identity. These findings will contribute to psychological research aimed at reducing anti-old/anti-youth attitudes among older adults.¹

1 A part of this study was presented at the 85th Annual Convention of the Japanese Psychological Association.

KEYWORDS:

• Older adults
• youth
• identity
• attitudes
• Bayesian structural equation modeling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/2MZP7.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/2MZP7.

Notes

1 A part of this study was presented at the 85th Annual Convention of the Japanese Psychological Association.

1. For further information on empirical research concerning ageism in Japan, please check the Open Science Framework (OSF) repository (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/2MZP7).

2. We also presented the results without screening on OSF. They were not significantly different from those presented in the main text.

3. The ppp values closer to 0.5 indicate that the model fits the observed data, while values closer to 0 indicate less fitness; a threshold of 0.05 is appropriate (Merkle & Rosseel, 2018; Muthén & Asparouhov, 2012).

4. We conducted the Bayesian SEM without including gender and control variables. The results were not significantly different from those presented in the main text (see OSF). We also confirmed that the correlation coefficients between variables are consistent with the results based on the Bayesian SEM (see OSF).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI [18J12472,20H01752].

Notes on contributors

Yuho Shimizu

Yuho Shimizu is a student in a doctor's course at the University of Tokyo. He majors in social psychology and his work focuses specifically on stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination.

Masumi Takeuchi

Masumi Takeuchi is a research fellow of Kobe University. Her work focuses specifically on aging and gender.

Kaori Karasawa

Kaori Karasawa is a professor of the University of Tokyo. Her work focuses specifically on social cognition and moral judgment.