Department of Communication and the Center for Multidisciplinary Research in Aging, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.
Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Gerontologist. 2018 Sep 14;58(5):960-969. doi: 10.1093/geront/gnx032.
Focusing on sex, the most salient topic featured in ageist jokes, this study aims at exploring the extent to which seniors' own humor reflects common ageist stereotypes or rather echoes contemporary consumer society representations of seniors' sexuality.
The study was based on a quantitative content analysis of 300 humorous sex-related messages posted during one full year by members of 14 leading online communities for seniors.
Findings indicated that whereas the portrayal of older adults in humor typically relied on negative ageist stereotypes, their representation in seniors' online sex-related humor depended on the social identity of the butt of this humor. If it was an in-group member (oneself, another community member, or the community as a whole), the portrayal was rather positive, but when the butt belonged to the out-group (older adults in general), the depiction was far more ageist. Nonetheless, the representation of older butts of humor was generally more positive than that of the younger ones.
These findings suggest that seniors tend to identify with current cultural representations of sexuality in later life and use sex-related humor as a personal means of resisting ageism. They apply two principal strategies: Distancing-reproducing certain ageist stereotypes by ascribing them to other older adults, but less so to their own group and even less than that to themselves-and equalizing older and younger individuals, even according the former an advantage regarding sexuality.
本研究聚焦于性别这一年龄歧视笑话中最突出的话题，旨在探讨老年人自身的幽默在多大程度上反映了普遍的年龄歧视刻板印象，或者呼应了当代消费社会对老年人性行为的表现。
本研究基于对 14 个领先的老年人在线社区的成员在整整一年中发布的 300 条幽默的与性相关的信息进行了定量内容分析。
研究结果表明，尽管幽默作品中老年人的形象通常依赖于负面的年龄歧视刻板印象，但在老年人在线与性相关的幽默作品中，他们的形象取决于幽默的对象的社会身份。如果是群体内部成员（自己、其他社区成员或整个社区），描绘就较为积极，但如果对象属于群体外部（一般的老年人），描绘就更加具有年龄歧视。然而，幽默中老年人臀部的形象总体上比年轻人的形象更为积极。
这些发现表明，老年人倾向于认同晚年时期的文化对性的表现，并使用与性相关的幽默作为个人抵制年龄歧视的手段。他们采用了两种主要策略：通过将某些年龄歧视刻板印象归因于其他老年人来保持距离——对自己的群体使用较少，对自己的使用则更少——并将老年人和年轻人平等化，甚至赋予前者在性方面的优势。
