Perceptions of forgetful and slow employees: does age matter?

Participants (perceivers) read a vignette describing a young or older employee (target) in a young-relevant or old-relevant work context who is either forgetful or slow. Regardless of work context, perceivers attributed older targets' forgetful and slow behavior more to internal stable causes but the identical behavior of younger targets more to internal unstable causes. Perceivers also felt less anger and greater sympathy and were more likely to recommend a promotion and raise for older than for young targets.

Age and capability: the role of forgetting and personal traits.

We used a person perception paradigm to investigate whether ascriptions of personal traits differ for a young versus old target being interviewed for a volunteer position that will require the performance of memory-related tasks. Perceivers (52 men and 92 women, ages 18 to 75 years) read a script in which a young or old target interviewee was either forgetful or not. Afterward, perceivers rated the target on six desirable traits (e.