Stereotype Threat Reduces the Positivity of Older Adults' Recall

Breaking the links between ageism and health: An integrated perspective

Ageism refers to prejudice, stereotypes or discrimination based on a person's actual or perceived chronological age. While ageism can affect people at all stages of the human lifespan, ageism against older adults has emerged as the most pervasive and potentially harmful. Much is now understood about how ageism can impact older people's health and wellbeing via structural, organisational, and provider level biases that threaten the provision of equitable and ethical healthcare. Negative attitudes about age and ageing also contribute to workforce shortages in aged care sectors, such as residential aged care and nursing. However, often underappreciated is how self-directed ageism, which refers to ageism turned against oneself, can also be an important determinant of health and wellbeing. Relative to external sources of ageism, negative internalised ageist beliefs are not only experienced more frequently in older adults' everyday lives, but are also more strongly linked to their health and wellbeing. Here we highlight how this understanding means that eliminating ageism requires a multifaceted approach that targets not only health care systems and aged care professionals, but older people themselves. Because normal age-related cognitive changes in how we think, perceive and reason increase the risk of older people viewing themselves through a negative and ageist lens, we provide a novel discussion of how broader insights from cognitive ageing literature must play a central role in any agenda focused on breaking the links between ageism and health.

Examining the Utility of a Multiple Group Membership Intervention for Alleviating the Effects of Age-Based Stereotype Threat on Older adults' Memory Performance

This study examined the effectiveness of a multiple group membership intervention for reducing the negative effects of age-based stereotype threat (ABST) on older adults' objective memory performance and subjective memory concerns. Healthy older adults (N = 68) were randomly allocated to an ABST + threat-removal (ABST+TR) or ABST + active-control (ABST+AC) condition. After activating ABST, the ABST+TR condition completed a group-listing task and the ABST+AC condition completed a meal-listing task. Participants then completed the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) and Everyday Memory Questionnaire - Revised. One significant difference was found in memory performance between conditions; specifically, after controlling for age, gender, and number of items listed, those in the ABST+TR condition performed significantly better on the RAVLT memory interference trial. Further, listing a greater number of group memberships was associated with better memory performance in the ABST+TR condition. No significant difference was found in subjective memory concerns between the ABST+TR condition and the ABST+AC condition. Overall, the current findings indicated that raising the salience of multiple group memberships offered limited protection for older adults' cognitive test performance in the context of ABST.

The cognitive tenacity of self-directed ageism

Ageism refers to prejudice or discrimination based on a person's age. When ageism is directed at older people, it is unique in two ways: it is socially condoned in a manner that other types of prejudice are not, and the animus is eventually self-directed. Of central interest here is why ageism becomes self-directed in late adulthood, despite its potentially harmful personal costs. We present a cognitive model in which negative ageist beliefs become increasingly accessible and difficult to eliminate owing to broader developmental shifts in mentation. Given that these effects are contingent on our social environment, systemic changes in societal conceptions of age and aging are needed if we are to reduce vulnerability to self-directed ageism.

Toward a New Approach to Investigate the Role of Working Memory in Stereotype Threat Effects

Stereotype threat arises when the activation of negative stereotypes about a group impairs performance of stigmatized individuals on stereotype relevant tasks. There is ample evidence that stereotype threat leads to performance detriments by consuming executive resources. Several studies indeed showed that working memory (WM) mediates stereotype threat effects among young adults. More recently, researchers have sought to understand whether the same mechanisms underlie age-based stereotype threat, but findings are mixed regarding the role of WM and some authors rather favor a motivational explanation based on regulatory fit. The present review critically appraises the empirical support for distinct forms of stereotype threat effects mediated by distinct mechanisms. We propose a novel approach based on one of the most recent WM models, the time-based resource sharing model, to evaluate the impact of stereotype threat on attentional resources in WM among both young and older adults.

Age-Based Healthcare Stereotype Threat during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Older adults have been identified as a high-risk population for COVID-19 by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Though well-intentioned, this nonspecific designation highlights stereotypes of older adults as frail and in need of protection, exacerbating negative age-based stereotypes that can have adverse effects on older adults' well-being. Healthcare stereotype threat (HCST) is concern about being judged by providers and receiving biased medical treatment based on stereotypes about one's identity - in this case age. Given the attention to older adults' physical vulnerabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, older adults may be especially worried about age-based judgments from medical providers and sensitive to ageist attitudes about COVID-19. Online data collection (April 13 to May 15, 2020) with adults aged 50 and older (N = 2325, M = 63.11, SD = 7.53) examined age-based HCST. Respondents who worried that healthcare providers judged them based on age (n = 584) also reported more negative COVID-19 reactions, including perceived indifference toward older adults, young adults' lack of concern about health, and unfavorable media coverage of older adults. The results highlight the intersection of two pandemics: COVID-19 and ageism. We close with consideration of the clinical implications of the results.

Beyond stereotypes: Using socioemotional selectivity theory to improve messaging to older adults

The tremendous heterogeneity in functional and demographic characteristics of the over-65 age group presents challenges to effective marketing and public health communications. Messages grounded on tacit assumptions that older people are frail, incompetent, and needy risk being overlooked by most of the older population; on the other hand, ignoring age-associated vulnerabilities is problematic. We argue that while traditional approaches to market segmentation based on chronological age often fail, reliable age differences in motivation can inform the types of information that older people typically prefer, attend to, and remember. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that as future time horizons grow limited - as they typically do with age - emotional goals are prioritized over goals that focus on exploration. As time left becomes more limited, positive messages are remembered better than negative, and products that help people savor the moment are preferred over those that benefit the long-term future. Relatedly, acknowledging individual strengths and personal resilience are likely to be especially appealing to older people.

Overcoming Age-Based Stereotypes to Optimise Cognitive Performance in Older Adults: A Systematic Review of Methodology and Existing Evidence

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Age-based stereotype threat (ABST) poses serious risks for the cognitive screening of older adults. This review aimed to identify and critically appraise the methodology and existing evidence of studies investigating the use of threat-removal (TR) strategies to overcome the effects of ABST on the cognitive performance of older adults. The types of strategies, their effectiveness in optimising cognitive performance, and factors influencing their effectiveness were examined.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS

A systematic review was conducted following PRISMA guidelines. PsycINFO, PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched from 1st January 1995 to 6th November 2019. Two authors independently assessed article eligibility and appraised methodological quality of eligible articles using an adaptation of the STROBE guidelines. Narrative synthesis was used to summarise results.

RESULTS

Thirty articles, reporting on 36 studies, were eligible and included. Overall, evidence for the effectiveness of TR was mixed and varied according to the explicitness of strategies and comparison conditions used. Studies examining blatant TR strategies, and those using a combination of blatant and subtle TR strategies, provided limited support for their effectiveness in overcoming ABST. However, studies evaluating subtle TR strategies provided preliminary support for their effectiveness in overcoming ABST.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Existing studies provide limited evidence regarding the effectiveness of TR strategies in overcoming ABST due to methodological limitations. Recommendations are made for the design of future studies to differentiate the benefits of TR strategies from the detrimental effects of ABST, thus potentially informing their use in clinical practice.

Confucian Values as a Buffer Against Age-Based Stereotype Threat for Chinese Older Adults

OBJECTIVES

Research has shown that stereotype threat can impair older adults' memory in Western cultures. We tested whether this also occurs for older adults from the East Asian Chinese culture. We also tested whether an intervention that highlighted Confucian principles would protect Chinese older adults from stereotype threat's detrimental effects.

METHOD

Culturally-Chinese older adults residing in the United States completed a memory test either under age-based stereotype threat about cognitive decline or not. Prior to this, some participants were also reminded of Confucian traditions of filial piety and were assured these values had been transmitted to the younger generation.

RESULTS

Stereotype threat impaired Chinese older adults' memory performance. However, our intervention was effective in eliminating this deficit. When the Chinese participants were reminded of the Confucian principle of filial piety they did not exhibit stereotype threat effects.

DISCUSSION

Confirming that younger adults have an obligation to respect their elders can eliminate the social-evaluative pressure of stereotype threat for Chinese older adults. These findings are noteworthy since population aging is happening at an unprecedented pace in East Asia. Although our results suggest that stereotype threat can adversely affect older adults' cognitive performance in these societies, we also identify a culturally-based intervention to alleviate this impairment.

Culture and well-being in late adulthood: Theory and evidence

Aging happens to everyone everywhere. At present, however, little is known about whether life-span adult development-and particularly development in late adulthood-is pancultural or culture-bound. Here, we propose that in Western cultural contexts, individuals are encouraged to maintain the active, positive, and independent self. This cultural expectation continues even in late adulthood, thus leading to a mismatch between aspirations to live up to the cultural expectation and the reality of aging. This mismatch is potentially alienating. In contrast, in Asian cultural contexts, a critical task throughout life is to achieve attunement with age-graded social roles. This ideal may be more attainable even in late adulthood. Our review of existent evidence lends support to this analysis. Specifically, in late adulthood, Americans showed a robust psychological bias toward high-arousal positive (vs. negative) emotions. This positivity, however, concealed a somber aspect of aging that manifested itself in more demanding realms of life. Thus, Americans in late adulthood also showed marked declines in certain desirable personality traits (e.g., extraversion and conscientiousness) and some aspects of the meaning in life (e.g., personal growth and purpose in life). None of these effects were apparent among East Asians. The current work underscores a need to extend research on life-span development beyond Western populations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The limited roles of cognitive capabilities and future time perspective in contributing to positivity effects

When compared to younger adults, older adults tend to favor positive over negative information in attention and memory. This is known as the positivity effect. Although this is a robust phenomenon, there is still debate about how it relates to individual differences in cognitive capabilities and future time perspective (FTP). To address this, we investigated how measures of fluid cognitive capabilities and FTP related to positivity effects within the domains of episodic memory, visual attention, and autobiographical memory. Cognitive capabilities were assessed using the National Institute of Health Toolbox Cognition battery, and included assessments of executive function, working memory, episodic memory, and processing speed. FTP was assessed via the Carstensen and Lang (1996) scale. Within our final sample (N = 196), we replicated positivity effects in all three task domains, which were all driven by age differences in how people responded to negative (but not positive) information. However, there was limited evidence that the magnitude of these age-related reductions in negativity varied as a function of individual differences in older adults' cognitive capabilities or FTP. Furthermore, when FTP did emerge as a predictor, the pattern was not in line with expectations based upon socioemotional selectivity theory. Thus, the positivity effect may be less reliant on cognitive capabilities and self-reported FTP than is often assumed. Given that there was also very little consistency in the extent to which participants displayed positivity effects across the task domains, these results also raise the possibility that there may be multiple mechanisms underlying positivity effects.

Rate of Perceived Exertion and Cardiorespiratory Fitness in Older Adults with and without Alzheimer's Disease

Exercise has many benefits for physical and cognitive health in older adults, yet there are many barriers to exercise adherence in this population. Subjective perception of exercise difficulty, or rate of perceived exertion (RPE), may especially be a barrier to exercise in individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD), due to changes in initiation and motivation that accompany changes in cognition and brain function. RPE is the most commonly used measure of subjective effort in exercise research, yet the relationship between RPE and objective fitness is not fully understood in older adults. A better understanding is needed to support initiation, engagement, and maintenance of exercise and determine the appropriateness for use of RPE as a measure in this population. Our study aimed to 1) evaluate the degree to which objective measures of cardiorespiratory fitness correlates with the most commonly used subjective measure of effort, RPE and 2) examine any difference in the relationship between objective cardiorespiratory fitness and RPE between individuals with and without AD. We explored these relationships during a graded exercise test. Objective fitness and subjective effort were negatively associated. Independent of cardiorespiratory fitness, older age, female gender, cognitive impairment, and use of heart medications predicted greater self-reported effort during exercise. Results are discussed in terms of social psychological phenomena and potential neuropsychological deficits leading to increased subjective feelings of effort. These findings establish that the RPE measure may not be appropriate and may even detract from effort during graded exercise testing among older adults with AD.