Senior Spectrum
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June 2008
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Adding Life to Years
It's time we took ageism as
seriously as racism or sexism
One morning, about a year ago, I arrived at our offices at the Sanford Center for Aging and noticed something new attached to the wire basket in the lobby in which our mail is left. Someone, probably one of our neighbors in the offices on the first floor, had printed out and attached a new paper label to the basket. It had the name of our organization printed on it and a cartoon drawing of an elderly man. He was bald with a gummy grin and huge, bushy white eyebrows. Two or three whiskers protruded from his chin. He was stooped over and leaning on a gnarled cane about as tall as his knee.
I'm sure whoever made up that label did so with the best of intentions (to make sure we got our mail) and thought the cartoon added a humorous touch. But looking at it I couldn't help but wonder, would anyone think it appropriate to decorate a sign for an African-American studies department with Aunt Jemima or put Betty Boop or a Barbie doll on the mailbox for the women's studies department?
That label was an illustration of ageism, a term for the negative stereotypes and prejudices that surround older adulthood. Ageism is no different from sexism or racism, except in terms of awareness and sensitivity. Also, unlike being a member of a particular race, gender, religion or nationality, all of us (if we live long enough) will feel the effects of having assumptions made about us based on how old we appear.
The term ageism was coined in 1969 by Robert N. Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and now a geriatrician at the Mount Sinai Medical School in New York City. He worked with the legendary Florida Congressman Claude Pepper on issues of age discrimination. As Butler recalls in an article for the journal Generations, Pepper wondered why pilots weren't allowed to fly commercial planes after age 60. Those who were flying at 59 years, 364 days were considered still competent at that point - what changed a day later? Pepper was a driving force behind legislation that in 1986 did away with virtually all forms of mandatory retirement.
Ageist attitudes have proven far more durable. A survey nearly a decade ago that aimed to uncover implicit attitudes (those that people aren't conscious of) found that 95 percent had negative views of old people, a higher proportion than for implicit racism or sexism.
A survey just of older adults found that more than 77 percent of them had experienced one or more incidents of ageism. Some of the more common complaints were having a doctor or nurse assume an ailment was caused by age, being patronized or talked down to, and being told a joke or receiving a birthday card that poked fun at old people.
One of the most widespread misperceptions about older adulthood is that conditions like loss of muscle control or memory are inevitable stages of the aging process. They're not. They're symptoms of diseases that need treating.
The book Ageism: Stereotyping and Prejudice Against Older Persons describes a raft of social-psychological concepts that have been applied to ageism. These include “compassionate ageism,” which is the tendency for younger people to view elders as being needier or more disadvantaged than they actually are; and “emotion-overgeneralization,” in which older adults' faces are perceived to be sadder than younger adults.' There's also “terror management,” the theory that ageism may result from the elderly arousing thoughts of death in others.
Studies show that ageism is so pervasive that it even exists among elders. After a lifetime of being exposed to negative stereotypes about aging, many people apparently end up conforming to them. This phenomenon can actually damage people's health and well-being. For example, research has found that older adults exposed to negative age-stereotypes tend to have worse memory performance and less will-to-live than those exposed to positive stereotypes. Also, their heart rate and blood pressure are higher when stressed.
Another study found that even among healthy older people, those exposed to positive age-stereotypes walked more energetically. Walking speed is often used as a marker for overall fitness and has been shown to be a predictor of short-term mortality.
Other research has shown that older adults are reluctant to admit when they have been the victims of ageism. Why? Because to do so would mean admitting to themselves that they had become a member of that most unenviable category of person: the old.
There are both hopeful and worrisome signs in regard to ageism. Many people worry that baby boomers as they enter retirement will be scapegoated for the continuing inflation of medical costs and the potential insolvency of the Social Security system. But some, including Charles F. Longino, Jr., director of the Reynolda Gerontology Program at Wake Forest University, think the boomers also could end up redefining what it means to be an older adult, just as they changed beliefs about civil rights, women's equality, and concern for the environment.
In an article in Generations, Longino predicted, “Because of the boomers' numbers, their higher levels of education and better general health, soft news stories will abound pointing to the relative flood of retired people into volunteering, adventure experiences, second careers, relocating abroad for retirement. These images, collectively, will support the gerontological notion of 'successful aging.'”
They could also support a new stereotype of older adulthood, as an enviable time of life.
(Lawrence J. Weiss, Ph.D. is director of the University of Nevada, Reno Sanford Center for Aging and an adjunct associate professor of medicine. He welcomes your comments on this column. Write to him at weisslj@unr.edu or c/o Sanford Center for Aging, Mail Stop 146, Reno, NV 89557-0146.)