Joan T. Erber

Ain't misbehavin': the effects of age and intentionality on judgments about misconduct.

In 2 person perception experiments, young and older perceivers read a scenario about a young or old female target who leaves a store without paying for a hat. In Experiment 1, the target claims she forgot she was wearing the hat when questioned by the manager. Perceivers thought the manager would have greater sympathy, less anger, and would recommend less punishment when the target was old. In Experiment 2, the target clearly forgot to pay for the hat, clearly stole it, or had ambiguous intentions. In the ambiguous condition, perceivers attributed the young targets behavior more to stealing and the old targets behavior more to forgetting. In the forget condition, young perceivers had equal sympathy for the young and old targets and held them similarly responsible, but older perceivers had greater sympathy for the forgetful old target and held her less responsible than they did the forgetful young target.

Age and forgetfulness: perceivers' impressions of targets' capability.

In a person perception paradigm, 72 young and 72 old adult Ss listened to tape recordings of a nonforgetful, moderately forgetful, or highly forgetful female target person being interviewed for a volunteer job. Ss then rated their opinion of the targets memory and how likely they would be to assign the target to easy and difficult tasks. Overall, Ss gave higher memory opinion ratings to old than to young targets. As expected, they were more likely to assign tasks to nonforgetful than to forgetful targets. However, they were more egalitarian than was hypothesized in their task assignment ratings for forgetful young versus forgetful old targets.

Dimensions of self-report about everyday memory in young and older adults

This study investigated the relationship between several aspects of memory self-report, objective memory, attitude toward intellectual aging, self-rated health, and self-rated depression in young and older adults. Participants completed a self-report depression scale, and then rated their discomfort with eight categories of everyday forgetting and their attitudes toward intellectual aging. One week later, they rated how frequently they experience the same categories of forgetting, and then completed a battery of objective memory tests analogous to those categories. Ten days later, they rated their willingness to participate in both memory improvement classes and nonmemory classes. Older adults reported significantly more frequent failures but less discomfort with the failures than the young adults. Frequency, discomfort, and self-reported depression were all positively correlated in the older group, but not the young group. Young and old adults were equally positive about participating in memory classes, which both age groups preferred to nonmemory classes; the correlation between willingness to participate in memory classes and objective memory approached significance in the young, but not in the old. Attitude toward intellectual aging was correlated with frequency of and discomfort with forgetting in the older group.

Age and Memory: Perceptions of Forgetful Young and Older Adults

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the relation between the age and memory performance. The chapter explains that memory has received a great deal of attention in the study of aging. Indeed, there is considerable evidence for the existence of age-related differences in memory. Moreover, older adults often complain about memory failures. However, memory failures can happen to anyone, regardless of age. That young and old targets are perceived as having equivalent capability can be related to a number of factors, including individuating information about the target, schemas perceivers may hold about compensating traits considered more typical of older than of young adults, and the context in which capability judgments are made. Moreover, targets that experience semantic failures are considered less capable than targets that experience episodic failures. With regard to the age of the perceivers, the findings suggest that older perceivers are more lenient when judging others who experience memory failures. Compared with young perceivers, older perceivers consider memory failures less serious in an absolute sense. In any case, the results of this study suggest that older perceivers may not be so lenient when judging an age peer whose forgetting has immediate negative consequences, particularly when that age peer has a lifestyle that differs from their own. Finally such affective responses can have implications for the self-image, and possibly the mental health, of the individuals who are forgetful.

Forgetting in the workplace: attributions and recommendations for young and older employees.

Preceivers assumed the role of manager in a hypothetical company that had either high or low bottom-line pressure. Then perceivers made attributions for a young or old, male or female, subordinate target employees memory-related performance problems, predictions about future problems, and recommendations about urgency of action and type of action necessary. Target age, target gender, and bottom-line pressure had no effect on attributions. However, when under high bottom-line pressure, perceivers had greater expectation that performance problems would continue, felt greater urgency for immediate action, and were less likely to recommend training when target employees were old than when they were young.

Age and Forgetfulness: Young Perceivers' Impressions of Young and Older Neighbors.

Previous person perception research has indicated that people use an age-based double standard when judging targets who experience single instances of memory failure. The two experiments reported here extend the investigation by assessing whether perceivers evidence a similar bias in judging both the memory capability and personal traits of targets who vary in age and degree of forgetfulness. In the first experiment 179 young adults rated how likely they would be to choose a certain type of neighbor, described in a two-page vignette, to perform memory tasks. The neighbors (i.e., target persons) age and degree of forgetfulness were manipulated. Participants gave higher choice ratings to nonforgetful than to forgetful targets. Also, they gave higher choice ratings to old over young targets. In the second experiment ninety young adults rated the degree to which they considered targets (described in the same vignettes used in the first experiment) to possess specific traits (e.g., responsible) that were both desirable and relevant to performing memory tasks. Nonforgetful targets received higher ratings than forgetful targets and older targets received higher ratings than young targets. The perception that older targets possess such traits to a greater degree than young targets may explain the initial finding that respondents were more likely to choose old over young targets to perform memory tasks.

Age differences in the effects of contextual framework and word-familiarity on episodic memory

The effect of contextual framework on episodic memory for words was investigated by asking young and older adults either to study a list of words for intentional recall, or to place the words into a story context, with subsequent incidental recall. The story context orienting task was no more beneficial for recall than the study task, and this was true for both young and old. Providing the story at both encoding and retrieval, however, was beneficial, but equally so for both age groups. Pre-experimental familiarity with word items in terms of cohort relevance was an important determinant of recall for both age groups.

Age differences in the effect of encoding congruence on incidental free and cued recall

The effect of encoding congruence on incidental free and cured recall was investigated by presenting young and older adults with a list of 24 words, one from each of 24 taxonomic categories. half the subjects from each age group received a congruent orienting task, in which category questions were matched with relevant word instances; the other half from each age group received a non-congruent orienting task, in which category questions were not matched with relevant instances. The age x orienting task x memory interaction indicated that the free recall performance of the young was higher following the congruent orienting, but that of the old was no different following congruent and non-congruent orienting. On cued recall, both age groups performed at the same high level following congruent orienting. The young had a marginally higher level of cued recall than the old following non-congruent orienting. The implications of these findings for processing and production deficiency hypotheses of age-related memory differences were discussed.

Age and Capability: The Role of Forgetting and Personal Traits

We used a person perception paradigm to investigate whether ascriptions of personal traits differ for a young versus old target being interviewed for a volunteer position that will require the performance of memory-related tasks. Perceivers (52 men and 92 women, ages 18 to 75 years) read a script in which a young or old target interviewee was either forgetful or not. Afterward, perceivers rated the target on six desirable traits (e.g., responsible) and five undesirable traits (e.g., stubborn). Compared to nonforgetful targets, forgetful targets received higher ratings on undesirable traits and lower ratings on desirable traits. With regard to age, young and old targets received similar ratings on undesirable traits, but old targets were rated higher on desirable traits. This suggests a general positive bias in favor of old targets.

Age and forgetfulness: The effect of implicit priming

Participants (i.e., perceivers) unscrambled either memory-related phrases (experimental group) or memory-neutral phrases (control group). Then perceivers read a vignette about a forgetful young, middle-aged, or old target person, after which they rated (a) the targets forgetfulness and (b) how difficult each of 12 tasks (4 low, 4 medium, and 4 high in memory load) would be for the target. High-memory-load tasks were rated as more difficult by perceivers in the experimental group than by perceivers in the control group. Thus, implicit priming of a forgetfulness schema resulted in harsher judgments about how difficult high-memory-load tasks would be for forgetful targets. However, this priming effect was no stronger for old than for young or middle-aged targets.