Does Age-Related Knowledge Impact Ageist Attitudes?

Abstract

Ageism is a type of discrimination that often goes unaddressed. In this study, we examined ageist attitudes that assume older people are sour, purposeless, and resentful (Cooney et al., 2020). We hypothesized that teaching participants about aging and debunking stereotypes would improve ageist attitudes compared to a non-learning group. We used an independent groups experimental design. Using the learning material we created, participants watched a video to learn facts and had their attitudes assessed directly afterward. Our control and experimental groups consisted of men, women, and non-binary persons whose ages ranged from 18 to 50 years. After conducting an independent t-test, we found that the attitudes of our experimental learning group did not differ from our control group. Though the experimental group passed the knowledge quiz and learned about aging, their attitudes remained unchanged.  Learning about ageism may reduce ageist attitudes, however, longer interventions may be more effective in reducing them.