The University of Tokyo, Japan; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Japan.
Toyo University, Japan.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2023 Sep;239:103995. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.103995. Epub 2023 Aug 1.
As the world's population is aging, it is necessary to create societies in which older adults and young people can live together comfortably. Reducing young people's negative attitudes toward older adults is a pressing issue. Given the unique characteristics of older adults, which most people will eventually become, we focused on how long people believe it will be before they become older adults (i.e., the subjective time of becoming older). To examine our hypotheses, we performed a Bayesian analysis, which has attracted considerable attention in psychological research in recent years. In Studies 1 and 2, even after controlling for variables such as youth identity and aging anxiety, those with a longer subjective time of becoming older had more negative attitudes toward older adults and lower advocacy for policies to support older adults. In Study 3, we examined the effect of shortening the participants' subjective time of becoming older by presenting an explanatory text on the stereotype embodiment theory and several related empirical findings. We observed decreased negative attitudes toward both the young-old and old-old groups and increased advocacy for policies to support older adults. In the supplemental experiment, the experimental manipulation used in Study 3 reduced participants' aging anxiety. Future studies should elaborate on the negative attitudes toward a broad subgroup of older adults, and examine the perceived relative importance of policies to support older adults compared with policies in other areas.
随着世界人口老龄化，有必要创建一个让老年人和年轻人都能舒适生活的社会。减少年轻人对老年人的负面态度是一个紧迫的问题。鉴于老年人的独特特征，大多数人最终都会成为老年人，我们关注的是人们认为自己需要多长时间才能成为老年人（即主观的老年时间）。为了检验我们的假设，我们进行了贝叶斯分析，该分析近年来在心理学研究中引起了相当大的关注。在研究 1 和研究 2 中，即使控制了青年认同和衰老焦虑等变量，那些主观上认为自己成为老年人的时间更长的人对老年人的态度更负面，对支持老年人的政策的支持度也更低。在研究 3 中，我们通过展示关于刻板印象体现理论和一些相关实证发现的解释性文本，检验了缩短参与者主观老年时间的效果。我们观察到，对年轻老年人和年老老年人的负面态度都有所减少，对支持老年人的政策的支持度也有所增加。在补充实验中，研究 3 中使用的实验操作降低了参与者的衰老焦虑。未来的研究应该详细说明对广泛的老年人群体的负面态度，并检验支持老年人的政策相对于其他领域政策的相对重要性。
