As we age we become less able to inhibit prej­u­diced infer­ences, rely­ing more on eth­nic and sex­ist stereo­types to inter­pret sit­u­a­tions, research into the sci­ence of prej­u­dice suggests.

There are a lot of clichés thrown around about the elderly, but one that seems to be true—or at least is backed up by research—is the belief they tend to be more prej­u­diced than younger peo­ple. This phenomenon—noted in The New York Times as early as 1941—is widely assumed to be the result of social­iza­tion. After all, today’s senior cit­i­zens grew up in an era when racism was wide­spread and gays stayed in the closet. Of course they aren’t as open-minded as their chil­dren and grandchildren.

A decade ago, a research team led by William von Hip­pel of the Uni­ver­sity of Queens­land chal­lenged that assump­tion. The psy­chol­o­gists pro­posed that older peo­ple may exhibit greater prej­u­dice because they have dif­fi­culty inhibit­ing the stereo­types that reg­u­larly get acti­vated in all of our brains. They sug­gested an aging brain is not as effec­tive in sup­press­ing unwanted information—including stereotypes.

Matthew Ygle­sias recently noted that cur­rent mar­riage equal­ity accep­tance in the U.S. decreases with age, sug­gest­ing that equal mar­riage rights are inevitable as the older gen­er­a­tions cease to have vot­ing power and/or die. When I con­sider this in light of the above, how­ever, I won­der if this really is the case?

via Intel­li­gent Life

The abstracts of the two papers dis­cussed in this arti­cle: Stereo­type Acti­va­tion, Inhi­bi­tion, and Aging and Aging and Stereo­type Sup­pres­sion.