Puncturing One Stereotype to Create Another

It is a long-term article of faith that seems impossible to counter: young people are flexible, liberal and eager for the new; old people are rigid, conservative and stuck in their ways. Elders themselves know the latter is not true, but conventional wisdom says otherwise and the stereotype has negative effects every day in age discrimination in the workplace, less aggressive healthcare and a general, cultural sidelining of elders.

Now, there is a new study published in the October 2007 issue of American Sociological Review that shows the reality about both age groups to be the reverse of what is believed.

Sociologist, Nicholas L. Danigelis, of the University of Vermont, studied the political attitudes of 46,510 American adults from the years 1972 to 2004.

“…people age 60 and older became more liberal more quickly than did their younger counterparts on most measures. Indeed, on some issues, such as protecting free speech for unpopular groups, the 60-and-older set became more tolerant over time, while the 40-and-under crowd became less so.”

BNet, January 2008

Beliefs and attitudes analyzed for the study covered a range of contentious issues: “women; blacks; support for civil rights for such unpopular groups as communists, racists and atheists; …opinions about such personal issues as divorce, extramarital sex, and the right to die.” The researchers were “particularly interested in how the attitudes of people age 60 and older compared to the attitudes of people under the age of 40.”

“As people age, their political attitudes grow more liberal and flexible. ‘We found no support for the bogeyman of gerontology, which is that the older you get, the more conservative and rigid you become,’” [Danigelis] says.

BNet, January 2008

Now here’s the interesting part – Danigelis’s explanation for the negative stereotypes elders have borne for so long and seem so difficult to dislodge:

“Danigelis points to two forces that turned Americans against their elders. First, ‘the American Revolution challenged the old systems of patriarchy with newfangled ideas of liberty and equality,’ he says, ‘which led to a systematic dismantling of the stature of older folks.’

“Second, the industrial revolution shifted people’s values away from experience and knowledge that the agrarian life demanded and toward the mobility and youth that factories preferred. ‘It was a 180-degree turn,’ he says. ‘Old became bad and young became good.’”

BNet, January 2008

In all the reading I’ve done about ageism over the past dozen years, I have never run into an explanation that makes as much sense. It doesn’t make the prejudice acceptable, just more comprehensible. Dangelis believes some stereotypes are diminishing, but, he continues,

“…I fear that we’re creating new stereotypes that are just as scary…” including that of ‘old people as an interest group whom you don’t want to cross because the AARP and Gray Panthers are going to come after you.’ Like their predecessors, these new views do not acknowledge that old people change their attitudes and behaviors in the same way that young people do.

“’Yet organizations should know that older workers are gems to be cherished, he says. ‘Older people have experience, they have knowledge, and they have the ability to adapt.’"

BNet, January 2008

So the conclusion appears to be that when one stereotype is punctured, another will be created to take its place.

[At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Herchel Newman reveals his rascally humor in Valentine Trick or Treat.]