Stereotype embodiment theory (SET) is a theoretical model first posited by psychologist Becca Levy to explain the process by which age stereotypes influence the health of older adults.Levy, B. (2009). Stereotype embodiment: A psychosocial approach to aging. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(6), 332-336. There are multiple well-documented effects of age stereotypes on a number of cognitive and physical outcomes (including memory, cardiovascular reactivity, and longevity).Levy, B. (1996). Improving memory in old age by implicit self-stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 1092–1107.Levy, B., Hausdorff, J., Hencke, R., & Wei, J. Y. (2000). Reducing cardiovascular stress with positive self-stereotypes of aging. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 55B, P205-P213.Levy, B., Slade M. D., & Kasl, S. V. (2002). Increased longevity by positive self-perceptions of aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 261-270.Wurm, S., Tesch-Römer, C., & Tomasik, M.J. (2007). Longitudinal findings on aging-related cognitions, control beliefs and health in later life. Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 62, P156–P164.
SET explains these findings according to a three-step process:
Age stereotypes are internalized from the host culture at a young age. At some point, these age stereotype become "self stereotypes" about oneself as an aging individual. These self-stereotypes are then consciously and unconsciously activated to exert their effects on individual health.
Underlying these three steps are SET's four main theoretical premises. According to Levy (2009): "The theory has four components: The stereotypes (a) become internalized across the lifespan, (b) can operate unconsciously, (c) gain salience from self-relevance, and (d) utilize multiple pathways."
Although this theory was developed to explain the operation of age stereotypes across the lifespan, it may also explain how other types of self-stereotypes operate, such as race stereotypes among African Americans and gender stereotypes among women.
Theoretical premises
Internalization of stereotypes across the life span Age stereotypes are internalized starting in early childhood.De Pallo, M., Thomas, R., Thompson, J., Fox, R. J., Goyer, A., & Abrams, T. (1995). Images of aging in America. Washington, DC: AARP. This process of early internalization is facilitated by the lack of resistances that are usually present when stereotypes are relevant to the personal identity of those exposed to them.Levy, B.R., & Banaji, M.R. (2002). Implicit ageism. In T. Nelson (Ed.), Ageism: Stereotyping and prejudice against older persons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. In North America and Europe, these stereotypes tend to be negative.Hummert, M. L. (2011). Age stereotypes and aging. In L. L. Carstensen, & T. A. Rando (Ed.), Handbook of the psychology of aging. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Levy, B., & Langer, E. (1994). Aging free from negative stereotypes: Successful memory in China and among the American deaf. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 989–997.Palmore, E. B. (1999). Ageism: Negative and positive. New York: Springer.Harrop, A. (2011). Agenda for later life 2011: Public policy and an ageing society. ageuk.org.uk (retrieved 4/2/2011).
This process continues on into early adulthood, where the acceptance and invocation of negative age stereotypes may represent short-term benefits in the form of greater social and economic resources being allocated to younger, rather than older, adults. Hence, younger adult workers tend to assume that older adult workers are less productive than their younger counterparts even when regular contact with older adult workers proves these assumptions inaccurate.Finkelstein, L. M., Burke, M. J., & Raju, N. S. (1995). Age discrimination in simulated employment contexts: An integrative analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 60, 652–663.McCann, R., & Giles, H. (2002). Ageism in the workplace: A communication perspective. In T. Nelson (Ed.), Ageism: Stereotyping and prejudice against older persons (pp. 163–199). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Unconscious operation of age stereotypes
Age stereotypes have been shown to operate unconsciously. For instance, a 1990 study by Purdue and Gurtman demonstrated that the associations made by their college-aged participants between certain negative traits and old age had an "automatic" component, such that, when their participants were subliminally primed (i.e., presented with stimuli at speeds sufficient for perception, but not recognition) with the word "old", they made associations with negative traits significantly faster than when they were subliminally primed with the word "young".Perdue, C. W., & Gurtman, M. B. (1990). Evidence for the automaticity of ageism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 26, 199–216.
Unconscious operation of age stereotypes in older individuals was demonstrated for the first time by Levy (1996) in an experimental study that showed age stereotypes can impact memory of older individuals. These age stereotype-memory findings have been replicated in a number of different laboratories.Horton, S., Baker, J., & Deakin, J. M. (2007). Stereotypes of aging: their effects on the health of seniors in North American society. Educational Gerontology, 33, 1021-35. Additional subliminal priming experiments have further linked the unconscious activation of age stereotypes to an individual's "will to live", such that older adults subliminally exposed to positive age stereotypes tended to accept life-prolonging interventions, while those exposed to negative age stereotypes tended to reject such interventions.Levy, B.R., Ashman, O., & Dror, I. (2000). To be or not to be: The effects of aging stereotypes on the will to live. Omega, 40, 409–420. Additionally, research conducted using the implicit-association test method has found further evidence for the presence of robust age stereotypes that operate independently of explicitly held age stereotypes.Nosek, B. A., Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2002). Math=Male, Me=Female, Therefore Math ≠ Me. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 44–59.Nosek, B. A., Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2002). Harvesting intergroup attitudes and beliefs from a demonstration website. Group Dynamics, 6, 101–115.
Levy and Mahzarin Banaji are credited with coining the term "implicit ageism" to describe the unconscious operation of age stereotypes and age prejudice.
Salience gain from self-relevance Levy (2003), in paraphrasing Snyder and Miene (1994), notes that "the old is the only outgroup that inevitably becomes an ingroup for individuals who live long enough" (pp. 33–54).Levy, B.R. (2003). Mind matters: Cognitive and physical effects of aging self-stereotypes. Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 58, P203–P211. In similar fashion, age stereotypes that at one point were directed outwardly at others who were perceived to be "old" are eventually directed inwardly at the self as age self-stereotypes when that self is recognized to be "old".Rothermund, K. (2005). Effects of age stereotypes on self-views and adaptation. In W. Greve, K. Rothermund, & D. Wentura (Eds.), The adaptive self. Cambridge, MA: Hogrefe & Huber.
These age self-stereotypes continue to be predominantly negative and exert negative influences on cognitive and physical health. It is worth noting that positive age stereotypes do exist, and where they predominate they exert similarly positive effects on individual health.
Utilization of multiple pathways The ways in which age stereotypes exert their influence on individual health can be quite varied. However, in general, it is hypothesized that these stereotypes exert their influence according to three primary mechanisms: psychological, behavioral, and physiological.
The psychological mechanism operates via self-fulfilling expectations. For example, in a large longitudinal study of twenty years, Levy and colleagues found that those with more positive self-perceptions of aging at baseline tended to have better functional health and greater longevity. Another study, to better establish the causal relationship between beliefs about one's own aging process and subsequent health outcomes, measured these outcomes as a product of randomly assigned, experimental primes. This study found that individuals performed better on cognitive and physical tasks when first subliminally primed with positive age stereotypes, and performed worse when first subliminally primed with negative age stereotypes.Levy, B.R., & Leifheit-Limson, E. (2009). The stereotype matching effect: Greater influence on functioning when age stereotypes correspond to outcomes. Psychology and Aging, 24, 230-233. Additionally, this study demonstrated a "stereotype-matching effect" whereby the impact of positive and negative age stereotypes on physical and mental health was most greatly manifest when the content of the stereotypes corresponded to the particular health outcome under observation.
The behavioral mechanism operates via health practices. Specifically, when health problems are seen as inevitable consequences of growing old, such perceptions can lead older individuals to consider healthy behaviors as futileLevy, B.R., & Myers, L.M. (2004). Preventive health behaviors influenced by self-perceptions of aging. Preventive Medicine, 39, 625-629. and may lead to reductions in self-efficacy. Conversely, Levy and Myers (2004) found that older adults with more positive self-perceptions of aging were significantly more likely to engage in health practices over time than those with more negative self-perceptions of aging.
The physiological mechanism operates via the autonomic nervous system. Cardiovascular reactivity, a measure of the autonomic nervous system's response to stress, is heightened in the presence of subliminally primed negative age stereotypes and reduced in the presence of subliminally primed positive age stereotypes. While occasional stress is not harmful, repeated elevation of cardiovascular response to stress can be quite detrimental to cardiac health. In fact, Levy and colleagues (2009) found that possessing negative age stereotypes in younger life can double the risk of having an adverse cardiovascular event after the age of 60.
History Aging has traditionally been explained in terms of physiological processes that lead to inevitable decline.Masoro, E. J. (2006). Are age-associated diseases an integral part of aging? In E. J. Masoro & S. N. Austad (Eds.), Handbook of the biology of aging. (6th ed., pp. 43-62) New York: Academic Press. However, more recent findings suggest that aging is a more subjective experience with health outcomes tied as intimately to social mores and behavior as they are to human biology. Additionally, when age stereotypes have been examined, such examinations have focused on the "targeters" (usually younger adults) rather than the targets (older adults). SET has emerged in response to and as a result of these gaps in the field of health and aging.