Perceptions of the elderly: Stereotypes as prototypes

Abstract

Three studies examined the structure of young persons' perceptions of the elderly within the framework of E. Rosch's (1978) theory of natural categories; 189 undergraduates served as Ss. The 1st 2 studies employed picture-sorting, trait-rating, and statement-sorting tasks to demonstrate that the cognitive representation of the elderly as a social category was differentiated into meaningful subcategories associated with distinctive physical features and personality and behavioral characteristics. In addition, behavioral and personality associations were stronger for "prototypic" instances of the different subcategories than for less prototypic instances. The 3rd study investigated the effects of category prototypicality on the processing and recall of information about specific individuals. It was found that information that mixes features from different subcategories (within the general category of the elderly) was recalled less well than was homogeneous information. On the other hand, information describing an elderly individual that was inconsistent with generalized stereotypes of the aged took longer to process and was recalled as well as was prototype-consistent information. Results support the general conclusion that stereotyping of individuals occurs at the level of basic rather than superordinate categories. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1981 American Psychological Association.