The effects of priming with age stereotypes on a PC-based mail-sorting task

This study examines whether unconscious priming of attitudes towards older age might change the self-efficacy of older employees, and thus modify their performance at work.

Three age- and gender-matched groups of 20 participants were primed with positive, negative or no age stereotypes by means of the scrambled sentence task, and were then transferred to a cognitively demanding PC-based mail-sorting task.

Participants' accuracy on the latter task was significantly higher in the positively primed group than in the unprimed group, and was significantly lower in the negatively primed group than in the unprimed group, except for one parameter.

These findings indicate that the performance of older workers may indeed be modifiable by unconscious priming. Practitioner Summary: This study analyses whether unconscious priming attitudes towards older age might modify work performance. Participants were primed with the scrambled sentence task and then conducted a cognitive mail-sorting task. The findings indicate that the performance of older workers may indeed be modifiable by unconscious negative as well as positive priming.