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Who Denigrates Today’s Youth?: The Role of Age, Implicit Theories, and Sharing the Same Negative Trait

Adults perceive the youth of the present as being worse than from when they were young. This phenomenon has been shown to be a product of a memory bias, adults are unable to accurately recall what children were like in the past so they impose their current selves onto their memories. In two studies...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Protzko, John, Schooler, Jonathan W.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9192333/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35712169
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.723515
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author Protzko, John
Schooler, Jonathan W.
author_facet Protzko, John
Schooler, Jonathan W.
author_sort Protzko, John
collection PubMed
description Adults perceive the youth of the present as being worse than from when they were young. This phenomenon has been shown to be a product of a memory bias, adults are unable to accurately recall what children were like in the past so they impose their current selves onto their memories. In two studies using American adults (N = 2,764), we seek to connect this finding to age, implicit theories of change, and extend the beliefs in the decline of the youth to new domains. Here we show as people age, they hold harsher beliefs about present children. Those who believe a trait does not change throughout the lifespan exhibit more forgiving attitudes toward the youth of today, believing they may not be in such decline on that trait. Finally, people who are low in a negative trait believe strongly that children are becoming more deficient in that particular trait (e.g., those who are not narcissistic believe the youth are becoming more narcissistic).
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spelling pubmed-91923332022-06-15 Who Denigrates Today’s Youth?: The Role of Age, Implicit Theories, and Sharing the Same Negative Trait Protzko, John Schooler, Jonathan W. Front Psychol Psychology Adults perceive the youth of the present as being worse than from when they were young. This phenomenon has been shown to be a product of a memory bias, adults are unable to accurately recall what children were like in the past so they impose their current selves onto their memories. In two studies using American adults (N = 2,764), we seek to connect this finding to age, implicit theories of change, and extend the beliefs in the decline of the youth to new domains. Here we show as people age, they hold harsher beliefs about present children. Those who believe a trait does not change throughout the lifespan exhibit more forgiving attitudes toward the youth of today, believing they may not be in such decline on that trait. Finally, people who are low in a negative trait believe strongly that children are becoming more deficient in that particular trait (e.g., those who are not narcissistic believe the youth are becoming more narcissistic). Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-05-30 /pmc/articles/PMC9192333/ /pubmed/35712169 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.723515 Text en Copyright © 2022 Protzko and Schooler. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Protzko, John
Schooler, Jonathan W.
Who Denigrates Today’s Youth?: The Role of Age, Implicit Theories, and Sharing the Same Negative Trait
title Who Denigrates Today’s Youth?: The Role of Age, Implicit Theories, and Sharing the Same Negative Trait
title_full Who Denigrates Today’s Youth?: The Role of Age, Implicit Theories, and Sharing the Same Negative Trait
title_fullStr Who Denigrates Today’s Youth?: The Role of Age, Implicit Theories, and Sharing the Same Negative Trait
title_full_unstemmed Who Denigrates Today’s Youth?: The Role of Age, Implicit Theories, and Sharing the Same Negative Trait
title_short Who Denigrates Today’s Youth?: The Role of Age, Implicit Theories, and Sharing the Same Negative Trait
title_sort who denigrates today’s youth?: the role of age, implicit theories, and sharing the same negative trait
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9192333/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35712169
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.723515
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