CULTURAL VARIATION OF AGE DIFFERENCES IN DEVELOPMENTAL TRANSITIONS AND ATTITUDES

Abstract

Abstract The age-group dissociation effect posits that, as negative age stereotypes become more salient, older adults will psychologically distance themselves from their own age group. This phenomenon is also seen in various attitudes about development and older adulthood, such as how relatively old or young individuals feel and the point at which older adulthood starts. Previous research has shown that people push older adulthood further into the future with every year of life—placing it perpetually on the horizon. However, most research on age attitudes and age-group dissociation have been conducted within one culture, and variation across settings is rarely examined. A sample of 1,007,956 participants ranging in age from 10 to 89 (M = 27.45, SD = 12.45; 67.1% women) from 13 different countries completed attitudinal measures about aging and developmental transitions. Across all countries and attitudinal measures, we replicated the age-group dissociation effect (βs > .36). However, culture moderated many of the effects. For example, relative to the U.S., Chinese and Korean participants reported a younger age at which older adulthood started but showed a more dramatic age-group dissociation effect. In contrast, other countries reached an asymptote where older adults did not push the transition into the future as dramatically as middle-aged adults. Relative to the U.S. (and controlling for age), most countries showed a younger subjective age, and countries varied according to cultural values. The current project sheds light on how age-related attitudes and perceptual processes vary (and don’t) across cultural contexts.