120. Does disease avoidance form a functional basis for stigmatisation towards the elderly?

Abstract

Background: Elderly individuals frequently experience segregation and greater social exclusion. Infected/diseased individuals experience similar isolation- disease avoidance though this typically resolves on recovery. Oaten has proposed that activation of a disease-avoidance system, responding to visible signs denoting disease (irrespective of their accuracy) may underpin stigma . Diseased/sick individuals are perceived as more disgusting suggesting that disgust may mediate this link. To address this we investigated implicit disgust /fear responses to old/young faces using a lexical decision making task. Methods: Thirty healthy participants (20 male, range 19–51 years) performed a speeded word non-word judgement on 240 disgust, fear and neutral words presented after 3-s presentation of a young/old/fearful/disgusted face (240 images taken from validated face databases). Words were subsequently rated for disgust and fear to obtain 120 participant-specific words rated for either disgust or fear for use in subsequent analyses. Results: Congruent disgust words/faces were associated with significant RT slowing. 2 (disgust-neutral/young face) × 2 (disgust neutral word) rmANOVA interaction F (1, 29) = 6.30, p < 0.02. A weak trend to speeded RT responses was observed to congruent fear words/faces F (1, 29) = 1.98, p = 0.17. Critically, old faces preceding disgust (but not fear) words were also associated with significant RT slowing, interaction F (1, 29) = 5.24, p < 0.03. Conclusions: Pictures of elderly faces are associated with implicit disgust responses supporting the proposition that disease avoidance mechanism may underpin stigma toward the elderly .