Designed to reveal the nature of widespread pejorative orientations faced by youth in an adult world, the diagnostic tool consists of a 9-item inventory which is to be self-administered in group situations and self-analyzed by the subject. The tool provides a means of measuring and investigating the patterns of coexistence among three different…

Ageism (unfair stereotyping of older adults), deeply embedded in the culture of 20th-century America, is reinforced by television and newspapers. The media depict old people as rigid, meddlesome, sexless, conservative, unhealthy, and forgetful. Most pernicious of all old age stereotypes is that of second childhood. Popular culture portrays…

Seven common myths about rural America are debunked, and three characteristics of the rural environment (diversity, sparse population, and interdependency with broader social and economic forces) are examined in relation to health care delivery and medical education. Health care contributions to rural economic needs are discussed. (Author/MSE)

Although social gerontologists recognize the heterogeneous nature of elderly populations, they have relied on the use of aggregate data and chronological age rather than sociological variables in their research. The notion of stigma, as developed by Goffman (1963), applied to the elderly focuses on social relationships rather than individual…

Historically, two commonly held stereotypes of genius have been that precocity was associated with social failure, and that precocity bred early burnout. Later research on the gifted has refuted these stereotypes. The two studies in this paper investigate whether the stereotypes have changed in light of this new knowledge. In the first study, 66…

Recent research has argued that negative stereotypes of older people are most likely to be found when age is a salient dimension for the judgements being made, e.g., when subjects' judgements of the elderly involve a comparison with younger people. When judgements of the elderly are made without an external reference group, such negative…

Students from grades one through five participated in a study to investigate whether elementary school children stereotype older people and, more specifically, whether they stereotype older people by sex. Photographs of a young woman, a young man, an old woman, and an old man were shown to the subjects, who were then asked to select from each of…

Although community-based treatment strategies have gained in prominence, recipients of those services still suffer from negative labeling and public reactions. To investigate differential effects of labels and/or descriptions of handicaps on attitudes toward disabilities, two studies were conducted. In the first study, 140 college students (65%…

Images that nations have of each other become barriers to effective intercultural communication if they are overgeneralized, oversimplified, or unfairly exaggerated. The communication difficulties between Japan and the United States, for example, exemplify how images negatively influence the political and economic relations between two countries.…

If art, when defined by existential and phenomenological boundaries, promotes self-understanding, then the verbal arts in particular offer fully developed hypothetical analogues of humans in action. The need to find some measure of self-knowledge through art does not diminish with age, but the self-understanding promoted by the portrayal of the…

Following methods previously developed, this study investigated the social stigma associated with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) by placing 90 telephone calls to landlords advertising rooms for rent in each of three Canadian cities: Windsor, Toronto, and Halifax. Compared to control conditions, calls ostensibly from AIDS patients were…

This document contains eight papers presented at the 1981 White House Conference on Aging. Each paper begins with a statement of a Congressional finding relevant to the topic under consideration, followed by a presentation and discussion of important issues related to each topic. The first paper, "Research on the Aging Process," explores…

Examines the climate in non-rural America that is and has been in part responsible for much of the suffering in rural areas. Shows how some specific rural inequities stem from federal policies. Appraises the Carter administration's response to rural problems. Suggests possible solutions. (SB)

A study measured the effect of reading materials containing positive depictions of aging and the elderly on the attitudes of primary grade children toward aging and elderly adults. Subjects, 91 students from grades one to three enrolled in a Jacksonville, Florida public school, read stories selected from "aging/elderly positive"…

Much research data are available on work and retirement which discounts the image of retirement as an affliction imposed on older workers. These findings indicate that increasing numbers of workers choose to retire before any mandatory age, few wish to return to work, and most are content with their retirement lives; however, negative views about…