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Abstract

The present dearth of research on the attitudes and responses of the elderly to social issues led to the application of a brief scale to an elderly group of 101 New Zealand men to measure their attitudes and knowledge about nuclear issues. A large proportion of the elderly were worried about the possibility of nuclear war and ranked it highly in a list of concerns. Half of the elderly thought that a nuclear war within 15 years was likely and only a small proportion felt that they could exert some influence to prevent nuclear war. The disquiet about nuclear war and its effects also extended to attitudes and beliefs about nuclear power and food irradiation. We compared responses of the elderly to those of a sample of 158 adolescent males to the same scale. Responses of the adolescents were very similar. A major difference was that the adolescents thought that the consequences of a nuclear war for New Zealand would be more severe.

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Reactions of the Elderly in New Zealand to Nuclear War and Other Nuclear Issues

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