You and I have heard the narrative that stereotypes over-generalize and even dehumanize fundamentally unique individuals a countless number of times; however, they are deeply ingrained in the everyday vernacular. I rarely spend a day without reading a crude racial or gender comment on my Facebook newsfeed or hearing a similar statement casually dropped in regular conversations with my friends.
As an Asian-American male living in the North Shore, I have had my fair share of being the “victim” of certain stereotypes, but I would be lying if I stated that I had never spewed any hurtful misconceptions about particular groups of people, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Because stereotypes are so common in society, I previously believed that they were not as harmful as the aforementioned “narrative” suggested. However, in a recent New York Times article, the author cited the research of a NYU professor named Mr. Aronson, who found that members of groups thought to be academically inferior, such as Latinos and African Americans, scored much lower than they actually do on tests when reminded of their race, fueling a vicious cycle of “affirming” the stereotype.
In order to start off this series on stereotypes, I want to direct your attention to the relatively unacknowledged age stereotype, which posits that one’s age influences that person’s overall capability. Senior citizens are usually the victim of this unfair categorizing: many people know them to be physically slow and have poor memory. However, in tandem with Mr. Aronson’s research, William Klemm, a neuroscience professor at Texas A&M University, claims in his Psychology Today article that accepting the judgment of others impairs one’s development and “performance capability.” He cited the research of a Yale professor named Becca Levy, who found that the memory performance of senior citizens improves substantially when they believe in a “positive self-stereotype.” When a sample group of old people were reminded of negative words associated with aging, each individual’s memory suddenly dropped. The main issue here is that senior citizens “have” poor memory skills only because they are unconfident about their capability to remember. As a side note, it seems that the confidence-memory relationship is a common theme that appears in society, especially regarding the truthfulness of testimony in court. As with any generalizations, the age stereotype fuels the lack of confidence that people have in their memory as they grow older.
When I first read Klemm’s article, I was wholly surprised to learn that stereotypes, especially the age label, work on a positive-feedback mechanism. When reminded of “bad memory” and other phrases associated with the age stereotype, old people actually exhibit those generalized qualities. I previously believed that the age stereotype exists partly because it does hold some truth (e.g., old people are really slow drivers). However, as Becca Levy’s research shows, the generalizations distort old people’s actual memory performance with an unjustified social definition about them. This cleared up a huge misconception about stereotypes for me, and now I see the truth in the “stereotypes de-humanize” narrative.
This post cannot end without a discussion on solutions to overcome this vicious cycle that targets of stereotypes find themselves in. A study by another Texas A&M professor named Lisa Geraci showed that subjective age is malleable. In other words, older adults can reverse the “bad-memory” stereotype associated with old age by adopting a more positive perception of their memory capacity. William Klemm adds that actively using established learning principles to improve memory may not necessarily boost old people’s ability to remember but rather reinforce their confidence. At the end of the day, it seems that if you believe in your memory performance, then it becomes true, and this in turn becomes a positive-feedback mechanism in itself, adding in more confidence for senior adults to respond to the age stereotype that society holds.
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