Implications of metastereotypes for attitudes toward intergenerational contact

Abstract

Metastereotypes, the stereotypes a person believes that those outside of their group hold of a social group to which (s)he belongs, have been implicated in problematic intergroup relationships and communication. Using an online survey administered to participants (aged 18–30, or 65 and older) recruited via Amazon’s MTurk (final N = 311), we tested the degree to which eliciting positive versus negative age-based metastereotypes affected perceptions of interage distance and the desire to avoid interage contact. The results of conditional process model analyses suggest that metastereotype valence has an indirect effect on these outcomes via intergroup anxiety, but that this is only the case when individuals believe that age-related stereotypes are applied to them personally by members of an age-based outgroup. These findings suggest that thinking of positive metastereotypes rather than negative ones could be a route to facilitating or improving interage contact, and that personalization could amplify these potential benefits.