The Effects of Age-Stereotype Priming on the Memory Performance of Older Adults

Abstract

The effects of age-stereotype priming on the memory performance of older adults were investigated through a conceptual replication and extension of Levy's (1996. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 1092-1107) study. Sixty young and 60 older adults were subliminally primed with a positive age stereotype, a negative age stereotype, or neutral primes. Memory performance on two tasks (a photo recall task and a dot location task) was measured before and after the priming intervention. Although the study does not provide unequivocal support for Levy's (1996) findings, results did show that priming a negative age stereotype undermined memory performance for a small sample of older adults who were "unaware" of the primes. However, contrary to Levy's findings, priming a positive age stereotype did not increase older adults' memory performance. There were no significant effects of priming positive or negative age stereotypes on the memory performance of young adults.