Abstract: As older Americans experience ageism in multiple domains, they tend to have an ongoing need to cope with it. The current study is the first to examine whether attributing ageism to societal rather than dispositional causes can have mental-health advantages. We randomly assigned older individuals to a societal-intervention group (in which ageism was blamed on institutions, such as the anti-aging industry), a dispositional-intervention group (in which ageism was blamed on the inner qualities of the targeters, such as personality), or a neutral-comparison group. Those in the societal intervention showed a 41% greater decline in anxiety than those in the dispositional intervention. In addition, we found that an awareness-raising, blame-shifting, and challenging ageism (ABC) intervention effectively increased positivity of age beliefs and reduced anxiety. The results suggest that identifying the societal sources of ageism that can be targeted by collective action empowers older persons and improves their mental health.
Levy et al. (Tue,) studied this question.