Race and Gender-Based Perceptions of Older Septuagenarian Adults.

Objectives: Older adults face racism, sexism, and ageism. As the U.S. population ages, it is important to understand how the current population views older adults.

Methods: Participants recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk provided perceptions of older Black and White models' photographs. Using mixed-effect models, we assessed interactions between race and gender of participants and models.

Results: Among Participants of Color and White participants ( = 712, 70% non-Hispanic White, 70% women, mean 37.81 years), Black models were perceived as more attractive, less threatening, and sadder than White models, but differences were greater for White participants (race-by-race interaction: attractive  = 0.003, threatening  = 0.009, sad  = 0.016). Each gender perceived their respective gender as more attractive (gender-by-gender interaction  < 0.0001). Male and female participants perceived male models as happier than female models, but differences were greater for male participants ( = 0.026). Irrespective of participant age group, women were perceived as more threatening ( = 0.012). Other perceptions were not significant.

Discussion: Participants had few biases toward older Black and White models, while gender biases favored men.