Combat Seniors’ Prejudices Against Outgroups

Compared to younger adults, seniors show greater suspiciousness of, hostility toward, and discrimination against people they consider outsiders. Because diversity helps societies advance and because the percentage of older adults in societies is increasing, we’d do well to combat prejudices in the elderly. Researchers at University of North Carolina-Greensboro and Indiana University aided such an effort by exploring why seniors have these beliefs, feelings, and behaviors.
     The fundamental explanation has to do with what psychologists call “executive ability.” Evolution has designed us to avoid outsiders during times of stress. Human beings are tribal by nature. Yet people tame their base characteristics by recognizing the advantages in doing so. It is our executive ability—our combination of sophisticated perceptual, memory, reasoning, and decision-making skills—which allows us to accomplish this. Executive abilities deteriorate in the elderly brain, so there is a retreat to the tribalism. Moreover, the deterioration in all sorts of abilities with advanced age builds stress for the elderly, worsening the prejudice.
     The latest research augments this explanation with attention to seniors’ positivity bias. In their advanced years, consumers slant their thoughts toward the positive, putting a happy edge even on sadness and fear. But the positivity bias requires mental energy, and seniors like shortcuts. One shortcut is to make yourself look better by making others look worse. In the research studies, older non-Muslim adults who were struggling harder to maintain a positivity bias were more likely to exhibit bias toward Muslims. This relationship was less true in the parallel comparisons for younger adults.
     Providing seniors an abundance of confidence-building activities and easing their stress will serve to reduce their prejudices. Arranging person-to-person interactions with members of outgroups also helps. Some years ago, The Atlantic asked 105 accomplished African-Americans, “What is the most racist thing that has ever happened to you?” The leading answer was a variation of, “Probably something I don’t know ever happened. An opportunity not available to me because the racism kept it hidden.” Yale professor Elizabeth Alexander said, “The most racist thing that ever happened to me would likely be a continual underestimation of my intellectual ability and capacity, and the real insidious aspect of that kind of racism is that we don't know half the time when people are underestimating us.”
     Much prejudice is intentional, but much of it results from a failure of intention. The intention to probe beyond first impressions.

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