The Development of Children's Prejudice against the Aged

Children's prejudice against the aged was studied in terms of their responses to an attitude scale and measures of their social interaction with aged compared to nonaged confederates. Participants were 144 middle-class children, four, six, and eight years of age. Findings from the attitude scale indicated significant levels of ageist prejudice among six- and eight-year-olds but not in four-year-olds. Eight-year-olds had significantly higher prejudice scores than six-year-olds. There were six measures of participant interaction with aged compared to nonaged confederates: proxemic distance, productivity, eye-contact initiation, number of words spoken, number of conversation initiations, and number of verbal appeals. On all of these measures except productivity, participants in each age group showed significant levels of ageist prejudice. Ancillary findings indicated that, in general, participants were more prejudiced against women than against men. Attitude scores correlated significantly with some of the behavioral measures but not with all of them.