The role of age and age-related attitudes in perceptions of elderly individuals

The goal of this study was to investigate the role of age-related attitudes in perceptions of elderly individuals. Fiske and Neuberg's (1990) model of person perception suggests that under some conditions people's attitudes t oward older adults as a group are related to perceptions of elderly individ uals. It was unclear, however, how people's attitudes toward their own agin g may affect those perceptions. In this study younger and older adults comp leted measures of their age-related attitudes and then in a second session evaluated an elderly individual. Results revealed that both group attitudes and own aging attitudes were related to judgments of elderly targets when the elderly target was seen as typical of the group. The findings have impl ications for person perception models as well as for research on age-relate d attitudes.