Cross-Cultural Comparisons in Implicit and Explicit Age Bias

Abstract

Most research documenting bias against older adults has been conducted in individualistic and industrialized cultures. In the current study, we examined cultural variation in attitudes toward older adults and subjective age in a large sample of 911,982 participants (M_age = 27.42, SD = 12.23; 67.6% women) from 68 different countries (M_size = 12,077; Mdn_size = 425.5). We hypothesized that age bias would be lower among those living in highly collectivistic countries. We found that living in collectivistic countries was associated with less implicit and explicit age bias, and greater feelings of warmth toward older adults compared with highly individualistic countries. Given the impact of age bias and prejudice on both the targets and perpetrators of bias, further research is needed to examine the causes of and interventions for bias against older adults.

Keywords: age bias; cultural differences; explicit bias; implicit bias; individualism/collectivism.