The Ambivalent Ageism Scale: Developing and Validating a Scale to Measure Benevolent and Hostile Ageism.

Purpose: Much like sexism, ageism is a multifaceted prejudice; it involves benevolent and hostile attitudes toward older adults. There are many scales designed to measure hostile ageism, yet none dedicated to measuring benevolent ageism. In the current studies, we developed and validated a 13-item measure: the Ambivalent Ageism Scale (AAS).

Comparing young and older adults' perceptions of conflicting stereotypes and multiply-categorizable individuals.

Individuals can be simultaneously categorized into multiple social groups (e.g., racial, gender, age), and stereotypes about one social group may conflict with another.

Does age group identification differentially influence younger and older adults' intergenerational perceptions?

People's knowledge that they will change age groups over time likely makes relations between age groups function differently from relations between racial or gender groups. We tested this possibility by examining whether people's identification with their current age group influenced their responses to threats to the status of their current age group. We found that age group identification was a good predictor of responses to status threat, particularly among young adults.