Age stereotypes in younger and older women: analyses of accommodative shifts with a sentence-priming task

A sentence-priming technique was used to examine whether older women (N = 39) share a more positive view of aging than younger women (N = 35). Situationally specified statements about older and younger persons were presented, followed either by a semantically related word, an unrelated word of the same valence, or a nonword. The accessibility of target words was measured by reaction times in a lexical decision task. Whereas a semantic priming effect for negatively connoted materials emerged for both groups, a priming effect for positively connoted materials was found for older women only. Furthermore, an affective priming effect was found for the older group, i.e., older women tended to respond relatively faster (slower) to semantically unrelated positive (negative) words following a sentence about an older person. The results are discussed within a coping-theoretical framework.