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Examining Attitudes and Experiences of Ageism During COVID-19: Are They on the Rise?

Gerontologists have warned of rising ageism amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Older adults have been portrayed as a homogenous group given their health vulnerabilities and have been viewed with mixed perceptions. For instance, the pandemic has been viewed as an “old person’s” disease and older adults ha...

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Autores principales: Vale, Michael, Sublett, Jennifer, Bisconti, Toni
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8680627/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.2297
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author Vale, Michael
Sublett, Jennifer
Bisconti, Toni
author_facet Vale, Michael
Sublett, Jennifer
Bisconti, Toni
author_sort Vale, Michael
collection PubMed
description Gerontologists have warned of rising ageism amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Older adults have been portrayed as a homogenous group given their health vulnerabilities and have been viewed with mixed perceptions. For instance, the pandemic has been viewed as an “old person’s” disease and older adults have been inherently linked to imposing health and safety lifestyle changes. Others have responded with acts of overaccommodative care that have minimized older adults’ autonomy. Taken together, there have been inferences of increased hostile and benevolent ageism. Currently, these claims lack empirical data, and the goal of this study was to examine if attitudes and experiences of ageism are on the rise. Across two studies, we examined young adults’ (N=268) attitudes of older adults and older adults’ (N=65) experiences of ageism before and after the start of the pandemic. In study 1, we examined ageist attitudes at 3 time points (2017, 2019, 2020) from separate, but equitable, college samples and found that hostile ageism was higher during the pandemic (F(2,265)=5.48, p<.001) and benevolent ageism demonstrated no differences. In study 2, we explored older adults’ experiences of ageism pre-and post-pandemic onset (2019, 2020) and, found that they reported experiencing less hostile ageism (t(64)=2.45, p<.05), with no differences in experienced benevolent ageism. Our findings suggest an increase in hostile ageist views, but a decrease in experiences, partially supporting the alleged claims of rising ageism. Nevertheless, the last year of the pandemic is dynamically contextualized and research should elaborate on the extent and consequences of this rise.
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spelling pubmed-86806272021-12-17 Examining Attitudes and Experiences of Ageism During COVID-19: Are They on the Rise? Vale, Michael Sublett, Jennifer Bisconti, Toni Innov Aging Abstracts Gerontologists have warned of rising ageism amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Older adults have been portrayed as a homogenous group given their health vulnerabilities and have been viewed with mixed perceptions. For instance, the pandemic has been viewed as an “old person’s” disease and older adults have been inherently linked to imposing health and safety lifestyle changes. Others have responded with acts of overaccommodative care that have minimized older adults’ autonomy. Taken together, there have been inferences of increased hostile and benevolent ageism. Currently, these claims lack empirical data, and the goal of this study was to examine if attitudes and experiences of ageism are on the rise. Across two studies, we examined young adults’ (N=268) attitudes of older adults and older adults’ (N=65) experiences of ageism before and after the start of the pandemic. In study 1, we examined ageist attitudes at 3 time points (2017, 2019, 2020) from separate, but equitable, college samples and found that hostile ageism was higher during the pandemic (F(2,265)=5.48, p<.001) and benevolent ageism demonstrated no differences. In study 2, we explored older adults’ experiences of ageism pre-and post-pandemic onset (2019, 2020) and, found that they reported experiencing less hostile ageism (t(64)=2.45, p<.05), with no differences in experienced benevolent ageism. Our findings suggest an increase in hostile ageist views, but a decrease in experiences, partially supporting the alleged claims of rising ageism. Nevertheless, the last year of the pandemic is dynamically contextualized and research should elaborate on the extent and consequences of this rise. Oxford University Press 2021-12-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8680627/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.2297 Text en © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Abstracts
Vale, Michael
Sublett, Jennifer
Bisconti, Toni
Examining Attitudes and Experiences of Ageism During COVID-19: Are They on the Rise?
title Examining Attitudes and Experiences of Ageism During COVID-19: Are They on the Rise?
title_full Examining Attitudes and Experiences of Ageism During COVID-19: Are They on the Rise?
title_fullStr Examining Attitudes and Experiences of Ageism During COVID-19: Are They on the Rise?
title_full_unstemmed Examining Attitudes and Experiences of Ageism During COVID-19: Are They on the Rise?
title_short Examining Attitudes and Experiences of Ageism During COVID-19: Are They on the Rise?
title_sort examining attitudes and experiences of ageism during covid-19: are they on the rise?
topic Abstracts
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8680627/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.2297
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