Implicit and explicit age cues influence the evaluation of job applications

In the hiring process, older job seekers are often at a disadvantage when compared to younger job seekers: They receive less callbacks to applications, less invitations to job interviews, and fewer job offers. This phenomenon has often been demonstrated by varying explicit cues such as the date of birth. Less studied, but also influential are implicit age cues (e.g., age-stereotypic characteristics or activities in applicant profiles). Across a series of three studies, we addressed both forms of age cues in job applications. We explored the influence of explicit age information (20 years or 60 years) and implicit age profiles (age-neutral, young, or old job-relevant characteristics) on hiring decisions in hypothetical scenarios and tested the effect of a short anti-discrimination prompt. Applicants’ age (i.e., the explicit age cue) reduced the hiring likelihood ratings irrespective of implicit age profiles. The implicit age profiles influenced the hypothetical hiring decisions by their age association and by the stereotypical relevance of individual characteristics (e.g., charismatic as an age-neutral characteristic is stereotypically relevant for a leadership position). Applicants with an implicit old profile were less likely hired than applicants with an implicit young profile when the hiring goal was to increase profit and when no particular job status was specified. The anti-discrimination prompt significantly reduced age discrimination. Ageism in the hiring process is not only a matter of explicit age cues, but also of implicit age cues. Raising awareness for ageism and prompting to disregard age could well diminish discriminatory behavior also in real hiring decisions.     

Watching diagnoses develop: Eye movements reveal symptom processing during diagnostic reasoning

Finding a probable explanation for observed symptoms is a highly complex task that draws on information retrieval from memory. Recent research suggests that observed symptoms are interpreted in a way that maximizes coherence for a single likely explanation. This becomes particularly clear if symptom sequences support more than one explanation. However, there are no existing process data available that allow coherence maximization to be traced in ambiguous diagnostic situations, where critical information has to be retrieved from memory. In this experiment, we applied memory indexing, an eye-tracking method that affords rich time-course information concerning memory-based cognitive processing during higher order thinking, to reveal symptom processing and the preferred interpretation of symptom sequences. Participants first learned information about causes and symptoms presented in spatial frames. Gaze allocation to emptied spatial frames during symptom processing and during the diagnostic response reflected the subjective status of hypotheses held in memory and the preferred interpretation of ambiguous symptoms. Memory indexing traced how the diagnostic decision developed and revealed instances of hypothesis change and biases in symptom processing. Memory indexing thus provided direct online evidence for coherence maximization in processing ambiguous information.     

Tracking multiple objects across abrupt viewpoint changes

The reported experiment tested the effect of abrupt and unpredictable viewpoint changes on the attentional tracking of multiple objects in dynamic 3-D scenes. Observers tracked targets that moved independently among identically looking distractors on a rectangular floor plane. The tracking interval was 11 s. Abrupt rotational viewpoint changes of 10°, 20°, or 30° occurred after 8 s. Accuracy of tracking targets across a 10° viewpoint change was comparable to accuracy in a continuous control condition, whereas viewpoint changes of 20° and 30° impaired tracking performance considerably. This result suggests that tracking is mainly dependant on a low-level process whose performance is saved against small disturbances by the visual system's ability to compensate for small changes of retinocentric coordinates. Tracking across large viewpoint changes succeeds only if allocentric coordinates are remembered to relocate targets after displacements.     

The impact of the nature of relationships on perceived burdensomeness and suicide ideation in a community sample of older adults

Older adults die by suicide at very high rates, and previous research indicates that perceived burdensomeness may contribute to deaths by suicide. In this study, the impact of the nature of relationships on perceived burdensomeness and suicide ideation was examined. Results indicated that older adults' perceptions of burden on younger generations were associated with greater overall perceived burdensomeness and suicide ideation when compared to the older adults' own or older generations. Thus, clinicians should examine general perceived burdensomeness as well as the types of relationships the older adult perceives himself or herself to be a burden on.     

The Moderating Effect of the Negative Impact of Recent Life Events on the Relation between Intrinsic Religiosity and Death Ideation in Older Adults

Researchers tested the hypothesis that the negative impact of recent life events would moderate the relationship between intrinsic religiosity and death ideation in older adults. Participants (n = 272) completed assessments of death ideation, intrinsic religiosity, and negative impact of recent life events. We confirmed the presence of concurrent moderation and found that older adults with greater negative impact of recent life events and high intrinsic religiosity reported greater death ideation. These relatively surprising findings may be due to reduced fear of death in intrinsically religious older adults, an explanation consistent with previous research.