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In honor of Ageism Awareness Day, we’re sharing insights from Instructional Professor Paul Nash who recently joined us and the American Society on Aging to explain the AIR Model of ageism, and how we can challenge and prevent the perpetuation of different forms of ageism.

Find his video interview and transcript below.

Interview Transcript

(00:00):

So ageism is a really large concept which covers two ends of the aging spectrum against old people and young people. But whether it’s young or old, it’s a systematic discrimination against people because of their chronological age. This can be due to prejudice, it can be also due to more instrumental and structural factors. So when we think of young ism, this can be referring to younger people as, oh, millennials say this, or Gen Z, say this old ism is something that we are more familiar with. It might be not allowing people to participate because of their age, not giving people jobs because of their age, discriminating for them to enter certain spaces. But it can also take both implicit and explicit forms. So implicit could be whether or not we are creating environments that are not conducive to older people. So there’s no restrooms, there’s no benches, there’s an overcrowded environment.

(01:01):

It could be that we are also enabling social or societal discrimination. So it could be anti-aging products that reinforce this narrative, or it could be ageist birthday cards, or simply just a greeting like you look great for your age, where we are reinforcing the stereotype that somebody shouldn’t look good at a particular age. Ageism can develop from as young as six years old. This is as young as we start to see it exhibited. But it is very much a life course approach. So myself and Dr. Gemma Carney at Queen University in Belfast develop the AIR model of ageism. This is a conceptual framework, bringing together existing research literature. So it’s about the acquisition, the internalization, and the reinforcement of ageism and how that occurs across the life course. So across the whole of the life course, we acquire attitudes through exposure in social media, et cetera, et cetera, whether it’s be a a model, whether it be our parents, whether it be just a general social acceptance.

(02:01):

And then as we go through the life course, we continue to acquire these attitudes. But when we start to reach older age, when we start to see gray hairs in the mirror and we start to see the wrinkles, well, we start to internalize these ideas of what being an older person is, and we find that people that have a negative perspective of their own aging then start to walk slower, perform worse on memory tests, and generally start to embody these negative stereotypes. And when this happens, this becomes reinforced. So it reinforces their own stereotypes and makes them perform worse, makes them walk less confidently. But also it reinforces the attitudes of younger people who see them acting in these stereotypical ways. Therefore, we start to see both a pathway of acquisition and internalization, but also a way in which we can potentially challenge these attitudes. We can challenge and we can counter ageism through production and use of counter stereotypical imagery,

(02:59):

But it has to be realistic. So there’s no point in concentrating on a 90-year-old who might run the London Marathon, for example. We need to concentrate on accurate representations of older adults. So rather than in films, having older adults who are all living with dementia, how about somebody who lives their everyday life that walks into town, that does their shopping, that comes back, that manages their own finances, that does the cooking? Not very sexy, but it is much more representative. So ageism is a problem for all ages, obviously, for older people as it leads to direct discrimination against them, and indeed younger people to a lesser extent as well. When we consider the life course perspective, every younger person is going to age, and as they age into that older category, then they’re gonna be subject to this discrimination. So perpetuating this, ageism only further perpetuates the challenges they’re going to face in later life themselves.

(03:53):

We can challenge these perceptions when we see them. If somebody says, you look good for your age, well challenge that saying, well, don’t I just look good. If you see these ages, greetings, cards that make tropes of older adults with dementia, et cetera, don’t buy them. Let’s actually start a movement against ageism. Let’s start a movement against anti-aging products. Let’s face it, I would much rather be aging than the alternative. So we need to start thinking about aging on a positive perspective, but not just positive. Being realistic. When we’re countering these stereotypes, we need to make sure that we are engaging in reality, we’re engaging with people’s emotions, but we are making sure we are not just being lazy and reliant on these stereotypes.

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