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…

Whether or not the aged should be served separately from other age groups is examined. There are two major arguments for age-integrated services: (1) they discourage ageism; and (2) they are more efficient. However, there is hardly any evidence that feelings against the elderly have been reduced because of the existence of age-neutral programs. In…

Information on male linkage is usually generalized from studies of female linkage and the saliency of the father-son tie in later life is unclear. The importance of the father-son tie was examined in 56 men aged 65 and older through a comparative analysis designed to compare the levels of association and helping between fathers and sons to those…

A review of studies concerning the reading habits of people 65 years old or older shows that females spend more time reading then do males; senior citizens do not suddenly develop new or extensive reading habits; they prefer light romance with no sex, biographies, westerns, and mysteries; intellectual and physical disabilities are not major…

Six- to nine-year-old children's (N=14) initial perceptions of the elderly were reexamined following an intervention consisting of an increase in the frequency of beneficial contact that the children had with old people. Beneficial contact was provided when elderly persons (N=23) served for two months as tutors in a reading program for normal…

Cognition in the elderly has been widely investigated, but there has been some disagreement concerning this phenomenon fostered in part by differences in instruments used, in data collection methods, and in analytic methods used. This study used Immediate and Delayed Recall data collected by the Health and Retirement Survey housed at the…

This paper challenges the dominant view of leadership, the organizational-effectiveness approach, and proposes a different concept of leadership in the context of retirement. A premise is that the organizational-effectiveness approach is inadequate to the task of retirement organizations and may inhibit senior participation. Following an…

Using data collected through telephone interviews with a national sample of adults, this study searched for evidence as to whether interviewers have stronger effects on the responses given to a wide range of questions by older people than on the responses of younger people. Responses to 30 items for which significant interviewer effects had…

This document traces theoretical developments in the psychology of aging during the last 50 years. The concept of theory is discussed as well as the bringing together of theories to form a model. After summarizing the early beginnings of American interest in aging, the work of major theoreticians is explored including Hall (senescence), Thorndike…

A study was made primarily to investigate attitudes of preschool children toward older and younger people. In addition, the age discrimination ability of preschool children was assessed, and the possible relationship of this ability to performance on a seriation task was explored. Quantity and quality of each child's contact with adults over 60…

A crucial question in any study is how representative the sample is of the population being studied at the time of the interview. This is of particular concern when the study is based on a follow-up of a sample of respondents initially interviewed for other purposes. This study evaluated the representativeness of a sample of elderly female…

Senior theater programs can act as catalysts for involvement of senior citizens, promoting self-confidence and fostering creativity. Myths about older people (concerning senility, incompetence, decline in intelligence, learning, rigidity, and retirement) should be recognized as inaccurate stereotypes and as barriers to active and productive lives.…

The general objective of this study was to examine life satisfaction within the milieu of a classic, sociological, community setting: Middletown, U.S.A. Subjects (N=400) were persons, 60 years of age and older, over one-half of whom were married and most of whom had at least one living child. A significant majority of these older Middletowners…

This study sought to describe public awareness, perceptions, concern and response to the phenomenon of mistreatment of older adults. The setting for the study was the classic community context of Middletown, U.S.A., Muncie/Delaware County, Indiana. Adults (N=400), selected by random digit dialing, were interviewed in November 1989. Subjects were…

The marital relationship is a basic context of retirement, where spouses' separate perceptions of retirement, and of each other's views, are an essential part of the retirement experience. To explore this issue, 297 married men who had been retired for 6 years or less, all participants in the Veterans Administration Normative Aging Study, reported…