A Meta-analysis of Positive and Negative Age Stereotype Priming Effects on Behavior Among Older Adults

Objective: Evidence has shown that age stereotypes influence several behavioral outcomes in later life via stereotype valence-outcome assimilation; however, a direct comparison of positive versus negative age stereotyping effects has not yet been made.

Methods: PsycINFO and Pubmed were used to generate a list of articles (n = 137), of which seven were applicable. From these articles, means, standard errors (SEs), and other relevant data were extracted for 52 dependent measures: 27 involved negative age primes and 25 involved positive age primes. Independent samples analysis of variance tests were used to explore the influence of prime valence and awareness on behavior compared with a neutral referent.

Results: A significant main effect for prime valence was found such that negative age priming elicited a greater effect on behavior than did positive age priming (F(1,48) = 4.32, p = .04). In fact, the effects from negative age priming were almost three times larger than those of positive priming when compared with a neutral baseline. This effect was not influenced by prime awareness, discipline of study, study design, or research group.

Discussion: Findings show that negative age stereotyping has a much stronger influence on important behavioral outcomes among older adults than does positive age stereotyping.