In today’s society, moving into old age can be a hard transition for most. One reason is that aging comes with the inability to be independent. As a result, this leads to the fear of retirement, a disruption to maintain one’s quality of life, and causes a pathway for negative self-perception. As such, several researchers have looked at old age stereotypes in order to analyse the affects it plays on older adults and their wellbeing. Throughout the literatures, two key analysis were examined in order to show how aversive age stereotypes are. This will be seen by looking at the effects of ageism stereotypes on patronizing speech and walking speed using implicit tasks.
Old age stereotypes can activate patronize speech and are an aversive reality that many individuals face throughout their daily interactions. This type of communication style can be found being done by family members, friends, and even nursing staff members (Williams, Herman, Gajewski, & Wilson, 2008). With patronizing communication being normalized by the public, scientific literature has shown that there are consequences to the seemingly harmless form of communication. Elderspeak has been defined by researcher as basic vocabulary, exaggerated intonations, and a type of simplified speech similar to the ones used by nursing mothers (Pierquet, 2006). People who use elderspeak do it in such a way that they think they are benefiting the older adult; however, patronizing communication can be traced back to common stereotypical views of the aging population (Williams et al., 2008; Ryan, Giles, Bartolucci, Henwood, 1986). This entails believing that older individuals are less competent and have regress back to dependence-like-qualities that are typically found in childhood (Williams et al., 2008; Levy, Hausdorff, Hencke, Wei, 2000). Research done by la Tourette and Meeks (2000), have suggest that this alludes to the Communication Predicament of Aging (CPA) model, which suggest that “Young adults often modify their style of speech toward older individuals due to negative stereotypes of elders, resulting in patronization” (p. 464). Thus, if an adult is speaking to an older adult, regardless if the features are salient (i.e. they look frail, they cannot hear well etc.) or internal characteristics that define old age stereotypes (i.e. dependent), old age stereotypes become activated and these are all reasons according to the CPA model why patronization occurs.
There are several methodologies that can come together in order to assess patronizing speech. Typical examples in the vast majority of scientific research consist of structured interviews, collection of demographic information and questionnaires (Ryan, Bourhis & Knops, 1991; la Tourette & Meeks, 2000; Levy et al., 2000). Moreover, a prevalent experimental design that gets implement when sampling older adults from nursing home and community-dwelling, are the use of videotapes vignettes and providing older adults with a 7-point Likert scales to assess the quality of the nurse’s interaction with the old adult in the videos (Ryan et al., 1991; la Tourette & Meeks, 2000). Videotapes conditions in the studies were always divided into two conditions (patronizing and nonpatronizing) such that the researchers could successfully measure the differences between the two using random assignment. Patronizing vignettes videos consisted of an interaction between an older adult and a health professional (i.e. a nurse) where the nurse used child-like languages and tones (Ryan et al., 1991; la Tourette & Meeks, 2000). On the other hand, nonpatronizing vignettes videos consisted of nurses talking to individuals with relatively normal speech (Ryan et al., 1991; la Tourette & Meeks, 2000).
The results of the studies that were looked at, all found evidence that patronizing speech is inappropriate and when it comes down to preference, older adults prefer adult speech over elderspeak (Ryan et al., 1991; la Tourette & Meeks, 2000; Levy et al., 2000). Furthermore, when researchers compared old adults who lived in nursing homes from community-dwelling, the same results were observed (la Tourette & Meeks, 2000). This suggest that regardless of the environment, older adults still wish to be treated with normal speech and not as someone who has regress to child-like dependence. In addition, the findings show that overaccommodation in speech style can allude to negative consequences (Ryan et al., 1991), one of them being resisting professional care (also known as Resistiveness to care or RTC) (Williams et al., 2008). Knowing this, healthcare providers should train their staff the consequences of patronizing communication. By doing this, they can insure that older adults get treated with respect and that they can still maintain their sense of identity. Future research should consider if there are any cultural differences in perceiving elderspeak. In addition, more attention should be done on types of elderspeak behaviours (i.e. change in pitch and use of certain words) in order to see if there are any differences in perceived patronized speech (Williams et al., 2008; Herman & Williams, 2009). One limitation to studies that used live interactions (i.e. old adults who spoke with a patronizing nurse or nonpatronizing nurse) instead of videotapes, risk for behaviours that are altered due to the awareness of being videotaped (Herman & Williams, 2009).
Although it has been seen that old age stereotypes affects the quality of communication, negative self-perception of ageism can also be harmful. Those who hold negative views about aging in their youthful years, will indeed harvest their negative stereotypes into old age (Robertson, Savva, King-Kallimanis, & Kenny, 2015). This implies that negative stereotypes of aging becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. By considering this preposition, several researchers have linked walking speed to the topic of negative stereotypes. Since one stereotype is that older adults walk slower, one can manipulate this by activating implicit stereotypes in order to measure whether negative aging stereotype does indeed have detrimental effects (Robertson et al., 2015; Stephan, Sutin, & Terracciano, 2015; Levy, 2003). Moreover, recent studies have shown that those who walk slower in old age are prone to falls and injuries. Thus, walking speed if a useful tool in predicting future disability and can explain a lot of factors when being measured (Robertson et al., 2015).
Subliminal priming has been a key technique used in this area of research (Levy, 2003; Doyen, Klein, Pichon, & Cleeremans, 2012). This entailed showing participants positive or negative old age stereotype words (i.e. “decrepit”) or scrambled sentences (i.e. “always/worried/is/he/house/”) (Levy, 2003; Doyen et al., 2012). A few other studies measured walking speed by using longitudinal designs (Robertson et al., 2015; Stephan et al., 2015). In addition, several studies carried out their implicit priming task on a computer screen and measured walking speed (also known as “gait speed”), before and after priming (Robertson et al., 2015; Stephan et al., 2015). Although priming was measure by using gait speed in several studies, Levy (2003) expanded his research to see if age stereotypes priming also affected handwriting. Levy (2003) measured this by looking to see if there were any discrepancies between those who were primed in the positive stereotype condition from those who were in the negative stereotype condition. Those who were in the negative priming condition were expected to have more shaky handwriting compared to those in the positive priming condition. Differences in scientific methodologies are also observed by referring to Robertson and her colleagues. Robertson et al. (2015) used questionnaires to asses participants aging experience and future aging expectations; this implied that participants were using their own beliefs about aging to rate their agreement with the sentences that were presented.
The results of Levy et al.’s study (2003) suggest that walking speed is affected when participants are primed with age related stereotypes. In addition, Robertson and her colleagues (2015), have shown that walking speed can be affected when one’s perception about aging is negative. These results suggest that apart from patronizing speech, activation of old age stereotypes can also affect older adults and their daily living. Although the vast majority of the research supports these conclusions, Doyen et al.’s (2012) results suggest that environmental cues are heighted heavily on gait speed. Thus, Doyen et al. (2012) results insinuates, “[…That] the primes alone are not sufficient and must be in line with environmental cues such as the experimenters’ behavior in order to elicit the effect on walking speed” (p. 6). These finding seems to reflect reality and can be seen with young to middle age groups, who are influenced by their cultural norms. Thus, the environment helps shapes common views on old age perception just as much as one’s personal beliefs.
In conclusion, the literatures presented, all found substantial evidence for ageism stereotypes being implemented in patronize speech. By looking at elderspeak, it was observed that older adults perceive this type of speech as a negative and has adverse effects such as resisting care. Additionally, it was also shown how eliciting implicit old age stereotypes can cause slower gait speed. These findings provide support that negative age stereotypes have detrimental effects and are predictors to potential disability once an individual reaches old age. Since it was observed that negative perception of old age is aversive, it would be important for clinicians and healthcare providers to promote awareness in modifying negative belief to avoid future complications such as affected walking (Robertson et al., 2015). Thus, by changing psychological belief and attitudes about aging, only then can individuals maintain their sense of wellbeing.