The Psychology of Ageism

(Mis)perceptions about older people are resilient but can be changed

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), ageism—discrimination or prejudice based on age—is a troubling fact of life in many parts of the world. Recognizing the problem as a major one, WHO has launched a global initiative focused on the development of “age-friendly” communities. Other organizations are pursuing similar efforts: AARP is committed to “disrupt the [negative] narrative” of aging, while the United Nations has labeled ageism as nothing less than a serious human rights issue.

While ageism is regularly directed at young people, it is especially prevalent with regard to older people. In the United States, ageism can be most easily detected in the workplace; older adults are often excluded as candidates for jobs solely because of their age. It is fair to say that ageism can be said to be embedded in American culture at an institutional level, something that plays out in both personal and professional relationships with younger people.

Curiously, the thriving of ageism runs contrary to progressive social change achieved over the past half-century. Significant strides have been taken in America relating to discrimination and prejudice based on both gender and race, as both the feminist and civil rights movements have done much to create a more equal society.

What might be called the aging rights movement has been far less successful, despite the “graying” of the nation’s population, the passage of laws making discrimination or prejudice based on age (and all other socially constructed divisions) illegal, and the presence of hundreds of anti-ageism voices (including myself).

Why is this so? Sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists have all shown that discrimination and prejudice are grounded in stereotypes—generalized beliefs or ideas about a group of people or things that are often inaccurate or harmful. As we well know, thoughts and feelings can and do result in behavior, accounting for why ageism is a major, frequently devastating issue for tens of millions of Americans.

Disturbingly, there is evidence that ageism is getting worse. In early 2024, Jo Ann Jenkins, then CEO of AARP, said that age discrimination in the workplace had risen due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And based on his research, Cornell University professor Karl Pillemer has declared that contemporary America is “the most age-segregated society that’s ever been” in terms of work, education, and housing, quite a claim.

The facts that (1) aging is a universal human experience, (2) all of us are aging all the time, (3) all young people will eventually (hopefully) be old people make ageism all the more peculiar. However misguided, stereotypes about older people are deeply rooted in perception—the cognitive process used by humans to try to make sense of the world via sensory information. Also, stereotypes are formed by a wide variety of social and cultural factors, which explains why discrimination and prejudice based on biological markers such as gender, skin color, weight, physical ability, mental health, sexuality, or age are so resistant to change.

With regard to age, it’s not difficult to identify some of the commonly held perceptions regarding older people that result in ageist behavior. These include:

Decline: Older people are often perceived as having lost certain physical and mental abilities, reducing their value as members of society.

Standards of beauty: Beauty in the United States has long been heavily defined by youth, making most older people appear to be less attractive than younger people.

Baby boomers: Boomers (currently aged 61 to 79) as a demographic cohort are disliked, if not outright despised, by many members of younger generations, contributing to ageist sentiment.

Gerontophobia: In a 1972 article in The Gerontologist, J.H. Bunzel coined the term “gerontophobia,” defining it as “the unreasonable fear and/or hatred of the elderly.”

Jack Levin and William C. Levin expanded the concept in their 1980 book Ageism: Prejudice and Discrimination Against the Elderly, writing that “gerontophobia seems to occur because old age is associated with death.” And in a 1980 study published in Psychology Today, psychologists Robert Kastenbaum and Bernice Neugarten argued that Americans, in general, had “an irrational fear of aging and, as a result, maintain a psychological distance from older persons.”

Given all these powerful forces, can ageism be defeated or at least lessened? Happily, yes, but it will take much more than current efforts to do so. Anti-ageism advocates can and should go to school on the more successful feminist and civil rights movements, which have achieved measurable progress not through rhetoric but via assertive and, if necessary, confrontational social, economic, and political activism. As consumers, investors, and voters, older people hold enormous power and have yet to wield it.

In short, older Americans can affect positive change by revisiting the noble effort to create a more just society by demanding equal rights for all citizens—including themselves.

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