It has long been known that “inter-generational contact” can breakdown ageism. The use of stereotypes is a “short cut” our brain uses. It is a way to process large amounts of data about a group of people without having to think about them one by one. Unfortunately if that stereotype contains negative connotations it can become “prejudice”. If we take actions on that prejudice it is “discrimination”.

Intergeneration Contact Theory argues that the stereotypes can be undermined. If a young person is exposed to a older person who does not match the stereotype they can, in time, question that stereotype. The same is true of an older person confronted with a young person who does not fit “the model”. The research suggests that for this to work we are not talking about a casual meeting. It is too easy to jump to the stereotype conclusion. A body piercing or a badly wore sweater can trigger a stereotype that can preclude further condideration.

The relationship has to be sustained for some time. It has to be a stable relationship. To successfully challenge the stereotype the contact must achieve four things. It must breakdown the social identity of the individual. They must stop thinking themselves as “young”. Instead they must think of themselves as “worker”, “musician”, “railway modeller” or whatever activity they are sharing with the other generation. They must be able to take the perspective of the other person and become aware of the differences. They must become “friends”. I have argued that this is why we must keep older people in the workforce (Newsletter #091 “..isms”)

The Importance of the Family

The places where intergenerational contact can take place are become scarce. Institutions separate us by age. Schools, colleges and work organize us by age. Our age determines our role in many parts of society. As a result we are surrounded by people of the same age. The UK Chief Medical Officer is concerned that we are physically separating the ages. Young people live in the cities. Older people live on the periphery of the country. The rest of us fill in the gaps. The result is that our friendship networks are based on age. 83% of young people in the US only have young friends. 72% of the over 55’s only have friends over 55. As B F Skinner put it:

As two sociologists put it:

In fact the family has become more age diverse over the years. In the US in 1900 only one in four newborns would have all four grandparents alive. By 1980 that had risen to two thirds. It will have increased since then. The families are however not living together as they used to. The percentage of over 65’s living alone has gone from 20% to 74%. There has been a corresponding drop in them living with their children. The recent economic turndown has increased that number again as children return home. The impact is not enough to reverse the trend.

All the data shows the potential for the family to overcome ageism. Ageist behaviours are less common among family members. Researchers on Elderspeak have shown that children do not use it on their parents. That is the child like speech often used on older people by the young. It involves slowing down the speach, articulating it more clearly and speaking louder (See Newsletter # 097 Elderspeak).

Games at the Family Gathering

All the good that families create may be undone by bringing everyone together to play games. Even in those settings “the enemy within” stills prowls. This is the stereotype that older people carry. It builds up over their years by observing “older people”. Unfortunately old age has moved. Physical and mental declines are now coming later. Your your parents are not good role models for how you will age. The enemy is often out of date in the expectations its sets.

Worst still the enemy can be easily triggered and has a big impact. In a recent study older people were asked to take a battery of cognitive ability tests. These included simple things like being given a string of numbers and being asked to repeat them in reverse order. Fine when we start at 4 but when it gets to 9. . .

For one (low Threat) group the only introduction was that the study

“was to see how people differ in their response to different tasks”.

For the second group the words were loaded to trigger the enemy:

“It is widely assumed that intellectual performance declines with age so the purpose of this study is to see whether old people do perform poorly on intellectual tasks than young people…”

It is hardly surprising the second group performed significantly worse on the ability tests. They took longer to answer the questions and got more wrong. The same effect has been shown with race and sex when the stereotypes dominate.

The study went on to show the opposing forces at work in our party game. They measured each older individual’s exposure to younger people. How many times they met younger people. Whether the experience was positive. How many close friends they had in the younger age group. Finally they asked about how many children and grandchildren they had. They found that the greater the amount of intergenerational contact, the less the impact of the enemy within. The scores were higher, but not as high as in the “no threat” condition.

Recommendations

How your own holiday party games went I leave you to analyse. Did the presence of young and old trigger negative stereotypes? Did the high levels of intergenerational contact reduce any ageism? Pitting the parents and grandparents against “the kids” in the quiz might not have been such a good idea.

I hope that your gatherings were happy and joyous and not too long. Remember Benjamin Franklins quote:

“Guests, like fish, start to smell in three days”