title: The effects of age-stereotype priming on the memory performance of older adults.
abstract: The effects of age-stereotype priming on the memory performance of older adults were investigated through a conceptual replication and extension of Levy's (1996. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 1092-1107) study. Sixty young and 60 older adults were subliminally primed with a positive age stereotype, a negative age stereotype, or neutral primes. Memory performance on two tasks (a photo recall task and a dot location task) was measured before and after the priming intervention. Although the study does not provide unequivocal support for Levy's (1996) findings, results did show that priming a negative age stereotype undermined memory performance for a small sample of older adults who were "unaware" of the primes. However, contrary to Levy's findings, priming a positive age stereotype did not increase older adults' memory performance. There were no significant effects of priming positive or negative age stereotypes on the memory performance of young adults.
authors.affiliation: Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Psychology, 274 5th Street, Atlanta, GA 30332-0170, USA.
authors.forename: Renee
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Stein
authors.forename: Fredda
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Blanchard-Fields
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hertzog
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D015577:Geriatric Assessment; D005852:Geriatric Psychiatry; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D008875:Middle Aged; D013239:Stereotyped Behavior; D013240:Stereotyping; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis