The Use of a Drawing Tool to Assess the Implicit Ageism of Students
The Use of a Drawing Tool to Assess the Implicit Ageism of Students

Summary/Abstract: Ageism has been generally defined as a prejudice people from a certain age group hold towards other age groups (Butler, 1969; 1975). Although such definitions do not restrict the use of the term to researching prejudices regarding a certain age group, currently ageism is deployed in studies concerning prejudices regarding older people and includes cognitive evaluations (negative stereotypes people might have regarding older people) as well as affective – emotional reactions towards older people, in different instances of daily life. Researchers admit the fact that some of the ageist reactions (both cognitive and emotional) could be captured by implicit measures. Implicit association tests have been used to measure subtle cues of ageism (see Levy & Banaji, 2002) and the validity of these measurements are largely discussed in the international psychological literature (see Greenwald, McGhee &Schwartz, 1998; Rudman et al., 1999, for a review). Drawing could also be used asa tool to research implicit ageism, though it has been approached to a lesser extend to research on ageism (see for example Barrett & Cantwell, 2007). In the current research, we employ the drawing technique on a sample of undergraduate students from a public university (N=165) to assess their visual representations of older people. Examining the features of the drawing allows us to talk about implicit ageism and the way the drawing tool could be a valid tool to examine implicit ageism.

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