Authors: Felc Brina, Felc Zlata.
Not much is known about the knowledge of ageism and the attitude towards ageist stereotypes among adolescents, adults and the elderly, so we tried to find out both in the survey.
Methods: This voluntary two-part online survey among 384 participants aged 15 to 90 from Eastern Slovenia determined intergenerational knowledge of ageism and attitudes towards age stereotypes. Three different age groups consisted of 188 adolescent students in 2022, 47 adults and 139 elderly in 2023. An important part of the questionnaire was formed by 31 stereotypical statements about the elderly on a three-point Likert scale, divided into six categories: (I) mood, (II) traditionalism, (III) frailty, (IV) attitude towards technology, (V) wisdom and (VI) sociability.
Results: It turned out that the knowledge of ageism and the attitude towards age stereotypes depend most on the age of the respondents. Only 18.6% of adolescents knew ageism, only those with an older relative and 49.5 % of adults and elderly were familiar with ageism. The latter defined it like this: 41.9% as interpersonal ageism, 14.5% as self-directed ageism, and 4.8% as institutional ageism. Furthermore, 29.6 % of adults and older respondents have experienced it as interpersonal ageism, mostly (50%) it was experienced by children, youth and other people, slightly less (27.5 %) experienced it as interpersonal ageism from random passers. A minority (7.5 %) of adult and elderly respondents also described that they experienced it from the side of the closest ones, and 7.5% as institutional ageism. Representatives of all three different age groups had a mixture of positive, neutral and negative attitudes towards stereotypes about the elderly. The biggest differences between generations were regarding the perception of traditionalism of elderly (p=0.002), the opinion of the attitude of the elderly towards technology (p=0.028) and the opinion of sociability of older people (p<0.001). The opinion of traditionalism was most negative among adolescents, and then improved with advanced age of respondents. Regarding the attitude towards modern technology, the most negative opinion existed among younger adolescents (15-17 years old) and adults (20-64 years old), while the opinion of older adolescents (18-19 years old) and those aged 65 and over was more positive. Regarding the sociability of the elderly, positive opinions of both groups of adolescents stood out the most, and then declined with advanced age of respondents. The differences between the positive view of the generations on the wisdom of the elders were insignificant.
Conclusion: The concept of ageism is more familiar among adults and the elderly than among adolescents. The negative and positive attitudes towards age stereotypes are intertwined from adolescence onwards although in adolescence, the attitude towards the elderly is most inclined to negative attitudes, which can strengthen the mechanisms of negative ageism already in early youth.
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