Children’s attitudes toward older people: current and future directions

Abstract

The children of today will be the adults of tomorrow and thus their attitudes toward older people lay the ground for their future self-concept and psychological well-being. Understanding how young children perceive older people is thus of crucial importance in an ageing world. The literature suggests mixed findings regarding the existence of ageism among children, which may be an artifact of the diversity measures used. This chapter presents a literature review that assesses most of these measures to assess children’s attitudes regarding older people and the assorted findings. We propose a classification based on two criteria: (i) the dimensions covered – cognitive, affective and behavioral (tripartite model of attitudes) and (ii) the four automaticity features (consciousness, controllability, intentionality and efficacy) which together led us to classify measures into three categories: solely explicit, solely implicit and partially both explicit and implicit measures. Based on this categorization, we delineate distinct patterns of results, associated with the participant’s age. In studies using explicit measures or a combination of both explicit and implicit measures, children revealed more positive or mixed attitudes regarding older people. The most positive attitudes were found in studies with older children and adolescents (e.g. using the Tuckman-Lorge Older People Scale”). When implicit measures were used, a different pattern of results emerged. Children expressed negative attitudes toward older people across childhood (e.g. behavioral measure). Based on this pattern of evidence, we make recommendations regarding the improvement of measures to assess children’s attitudes toward older people at different points in their social development.