Author ' s personal copy Stereotype activation , inhibition , and aging

This research explored age-related changes in drawing stereotypic inferences during the comprehension of narrative texts. Previous research suggests that declines in inhibitory function can lead older adults to rely more on stereotypes and be more prejudiced than younger adults, even in the face of a desire to be non-prejudiced. In two experiments reported here, younger and older adults read stories that allowed for stereotypic inferences. Older adults were less likely to inhibit stereotypic inferences as measured by recognition measures and lexical decision times. A third control experiment verified that the results of the lexical decision task were not due to a priori response biases for the specific target words. Overall, older adults were more likely to make and maintain stereotypic inferences than younger adults, potentially causing them to be more prejudiced than younger adults. 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Age differences in prejudice are widely documented in the psychological literature, with older adults typically showing greater prejudice than younger adults toward a variety of social groups (Firebaugh & Davis, 1988; Herek, 2000; Wilson, 1996). For many years, the unexamined assumption that guided psychological understanding of these results was that older people as a cohort came of age in more prejudiced times, and thus their attitudes reflected their earlier socialization. According to this explanation, older people are more prejudiced than younger people because their attitudes have not changed, or have changed only slightly, since their young adulthood when prejudiced attitudes were more widespread, accepted, and strongly endorsed than they are today (Gilbert, 1951; Karlins, Coffman, & Walters, 1969; Katz & Braly, 1933; Schuman, Steeth, Bobo, & Krysan, 1997). In contrast to this traditional explanation for age differences in prejudice, von Hippel, Silver, and Lynch (2000) suggested that older people may exhibit greater prejudice because they have difficulty inhibiting their unintentionally activated stereotypes and associated negative evaluations. In the current paper, we explore this possibility by examining age differences in stereotype activation. Stereotype activation and inhibition In an influential model of prejudice, Devine (1989) proposed that stereotypes become over-learned due to their societal prevalence, and are automatically activated upon encounters with individual members of stereotyped groups. Non-prejudiced individuals are differentiated from prejudiced individuals in this model not by whether prejudiced thoughts are activated, but by whether they inhibit those thoughts and replace them with more egalitarian beliefs. Prejudiced individuals endorse the stereotypic thoughts that are automatically activated, and non-prejudiced individuals reject and subsequently inhibit the stereotypic thoughts. Although later research has indicated that activation of stereotypic thoughts is not automatic for all people or in all situations (e.g., Fein & Spencer, 1997; Son Hing, Chung-Yan, Hamilton, & Zanna, 2008), most models of stereotyping and prejudice have maintained a tacit role for unintended activation and intentional inhibition. For example, Gilbert and Hixon (1991) provided evidence that stereotype activation is not inevitable, but once stereotypes are activated, individuals who are distracted are more likely to apply them in judgment. This finding suggests that effortful inhibitory processes may be critical for preventing activated stereotypes from influencing judgment. Relatedly, Bodenhausen (1990) has demonstrated that people are more likely to apply stereotypes when they are off-cycle in their circadian rhythm. Because inhibitory abilities are weaker during circadian off-cycles (May & Hasher, 1998; May, Hasher, & Stoltzfus, 1993), this finding is consistent with the notion that people prevent themselves from relying on stereotypes by effortfully inhibiting them. Extending this research to the domain of aging, von Hippel et al. (2000) found that increases in stereotyping and prejudice that emerged among older adults appeared to be a function of inhibitory deficits. In their study, older adults were more likely to rely on stereotypes than younger adults, and these age differences were mediated by performance on a task designed to measure inhibitory ability (a reading task in which people were to ignore distracting text; Connelly, Hasher, & Zacks, 1991). Similarly, older adults were 0022-1031/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp. 2009.09. 010 * Corresponding author. Fax: +1 574 631 8883. E-mail address: gradvans@nd.edu (G.A. Radvansky). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46 (2010) 51–60