To help or not: negative aging stereotypes held by younger adults could promote helping behaviors toward older adults.

Aging stereotypes affect older adults' behaviors, however, it is unclear whether and how (negative) aging stereotypes influence younger adults' behaviors toward older adults. Two possibilities arose, such that aging stereotypes would reduce helping behaviors according to TMT and SIT; while based on the BIAS map, we would expect the opposite. The present study aimed to further compare the two possibilities by examining the effect of negative aging stereotypes on younger adults' helping behaviors, and testing which theory would fit the data better. In a cross-sectional study (Study 1), 112 Chinese younger adults (M = 22.67, SD = 2.56) were recruited. Aging stereotypes were measured by the Ambivalent Ageism Scale and the abbreviated ageism questionnaire. And their prosocial behaviors were measured by the modified third-party punishment task. The results revealed that high benevolent ageism would increase helping behaviors toward older adults. In the following experiment with aging stereotype priming (positive, neutral vs. negative) among 130 Chinese younger adults (M = 26.82, SD = 3.70), we confirmed the influence of negative aging stereotypes on prosocial behaviors measured by both third-party punishment and Social Value Orientation tasks. Study 2 further demonstrated that pity might mediate the association between negative aging stereotypes and behaviors. Our results indicated that younger adults' negative aging stereotypes could increase their prosociality toward older adults through pity in line with BIAS maps. It also had significant theoretical and practical implications for future research. For example, with more education and intergenerational contact in younger generation which could evoke pity feelings for older adults, could help to build harmonious intergenerational relations. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04371-0.

Pension Tension: Retirement Annuity Fosters Ageism Across Countries and Cultures.

Background and Objectives: Globally aging populations raise worldwide concerns about how an older population will be valued. Cross-culturally, many espouse that Eastern cultures revere their older adults more than Westerners, due to stronger collectivism and filial piety traditions. In contrast, this paper proposes a resource tension hypothesis, whereby rapid population aging causes pragmatic strain across all modernized societies, fostering ageism. Research Design and Methods: Three studies supported this resource tension hypothesis, focusing on the pragmatic role of public pensions-a fundamental resource inherently pitting older versus younger generations-in fostering ageism. Study 1 tested the relationship between nation-level public pension rate and attitudes toward older adults by using World Values Survey and European Social Survey data sets. Study 2 further explored this relationship via priming both the pension-based resource scarcity and the intergenerational competition over the public pension. Study 3 offered an intervention-future-self-thinking via a photo ager-on reducing intergenerational tensions under pension scarcity conditions. Results: Study 1 found a significant link between nation-level public pension rate and negative older adult attitudes across 39,700 World Values Survey, and 29,797 European Social Survey data points. Study 2 further supported the pension-ageism link via experimental methods. Participants who were reminded of the scarcity of pensions and intergenerational competition exhibited more negative attitudes toward older adults. Study 3 confirmed the effect of the future-self intervention on enhancing attitudes toward older adults even despite scarce pension resources. Discussion and Implications: The findings support a resource explanation in driving perceptions of older adults, implicate pensions as a key mechanism driving intergenerational attitudes, and identify future-self thinking as a critical intervention. The present studies open up new research pathways for understanding and accommodating the globally aging population.

We Were All Once Young: Reducing Hostile Ageism From Younger Adults' Perspective.

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.