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Updated: Jul 26, 2025

Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing
Published on: January 24, 2020
Manipulating prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement
Maria Wirth1, M Clara de Paula Couto1, Maria K Pavlova2
1Department of Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Prescriptive views of aging (PVoA) endorsement can be modified by reflecting on agreement or disagreement. However, these effects are specific to the age norm and life domain, though they transfer from others to self.
Area of Science:
- Gerontology and Social Psychology
- Aging research
- Social norms
Background:
- Older adults face societal expectations for 'active aging' or 'altruistic disengagement'.
- Violating these prescriptive views of aging (PVoA) can lead to negative consequences like marginalization.
- The modifiability of PVoA endorsement remains underexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the malleability of prescriptive views of aging (PVoA) endorsement.
- To explore if PVoA malleability generalizes across age norms (active aging, altruistic disengagement), life domains (health, social), and targets (self, others).
Main Methods:
- Two preregistered experiments were conducted with adults aged 50-89.
- Participants reflected on their agreement or disagreement with PVoA.
- Experiment 1 focused on personal PVoA endorsement; Experiment 2 focused on societal PVoA endorsement.
Main Results:
- Reflecting on agreement increased PVoA endorsement, while reflecting on disagreement decreased it.
- The endorsement effect was specific to the age norm and life domain; no transfer was observed between active aging and altruistic disengagement, or across health and social domains.
- Participants applied the same prescriptions to themselves as to others, showing a transfer from other- to self-related PVoA endorsement.
Conclusions:
- Prescriptive views of aging (PVoA) endorsement is modifiable.
- The cognitive representation of PVoA is norm- and domain-specific.
- Findings offer insights for developing interventions targeting PVoA and promoting adaptive aging.
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