Chen Zizhuo, Zhang Xin
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Mar 24;13:793373. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.793373. eCollection 2022.
The worldwide spreading pandemic, COVID-19, has caused hostile ageism toward older adults. We adopted a new intervention to reduce such hostile ageism. "Imagine that they were Young" referred to the imagination of what an older adult might look like, think, and behave when they were once young, which was a reversed but refined intervention of the widely-used method of "Imagine that you were old." In the present study, intergenerational tension was primed, and then 205 younger adults in China aged 18-37 were randomly assigned to 3 different conditions ("Imagine that they were Young," "Imagine that you were old," and control condition), asking them to imagine (and then write down) once older adults were young, or a future aging self, or read an unrelated essay respectively as experimental manipulations. Then they should distribute medical funds worthy of Chinese 1 million to two patients with COVID-19 of 25 and 85 years old indicating their attitudes toward older adults (or hostile ageism). Finally, we measured their general attitudes and stereotypes toward older adults. Results verified the effectiveness of both interventions, such that younger adults who took either intervention distributed more medical funds and showed more positive aging attitudes toward older adults than those in the control group. Moreover, "Imagine that they were Young" was tested to be even more effective than "Imagine that you were old." A series of relative mediation models revealed that the stereotype of warmth mediated the effect for both interventions on decreased hostile ageism behaviors, compared with the control condition. While "Imagine that they were Young" could additionally reduce hostile ageism through a higher level of "including the older adults in their self-group (the young)." This new intervention might be a good alternative to eliminate hostile ageism.
全球蔓延的新冠疫情引发了对老年人的敌意性年龄歧视。我们采用了一种新的干预措施来减少这种敌意性年龄歧视。“想象他们年轻时的样子”指的是想象老年人年轻时可能的外貌、思维和行为方式，这是对广泛使用的“想象你年老时的样子”方法的一种反向但优化的干预措施。在本研究中，引发了代际紧张关系，然后将205名年龄在18至37岁之间的中国年轻人随机分配到3种不同条件下（“想象他们年轻时的样子”、“想象你年老时的样子”和控制组），要求他们分别想象（并写下）老年人年轻时的样子、未来衰老的自己，或者阅读一篇无关的文章作为实验操作。然后，他们要将价值100万元人民币的医疗资金分配给两名分别为25岁和85岁的新冠肺炎患者，以此表明他们对老年人的态度（或敌意性年龄歧视）。最后，我们测量了他们对老年人的总体态度和刻板印象。结果验证了两种干预措施的有效性，即接受任何一种干预的年轻人比对照组分配了更多的医疗资金，并且对老年人表现出更积极的衰老态度。此外，“想象他们年轻时的样子”被证明比“想象你年老时的样子”更有效。一系列相关的中介模型表明，与控制组相比，温暖刻板印象介导了两种干预措施对减少敌意性年龄歧视行为的影响。而“想象他们年轻时的样子”还可以通过更高水平的“将老年人纳入自己的群体（年轻人）”来额外减少敌意性年龄歧视。这种新的干预措施可能是消除敌意性年龄歧视的一个很好选择。
