Stereotypes of young and old: does age outweigh gender?
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Updated: Oct 24, 2026

Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing
Published on: January 24, 2020
1Department of Psychological Science, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana 47306.
Abstract:
Stereotypes of age and gender are examined with 35-year-old and 65-year-old men and women as target persons. Age stereotypes were more pronounced than gender stereotypes; respondents offered more elaborate free-response descriptions of older targets than of younger targets and described same-age targets more similarly than same-sex targets. On the rating scales, older people were judged less likely to possess masculine characteristics, but ratings of feminine characteristics were largely unaffected by age. Older people were not uniformly devalued on the age-stereotypic characteristics, but when negative evaluations occurred they were of the older targets. These results attest to the importance of a multidimensional conception of age and gender stereotypes.
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