Picture it. 1994. Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio. The class was Adult Development and Aging. The assignment was an “Old Age Simulation.” Everyone was excited to “experience” being elderly. We had glasses to impair our vision, cotton balls for our ears, ACE bandages around our joints, transparent Band-Aids on our fingers, and even a straw out of which to breathe. The take home message for me was aging sucked. I was 21 years old and had grown up around tons of older adults; very few of whom seemed to struggle as badly as I did that one day trying to “experience” their life. And what was this exercise intended to do? Build empathy, right? I told my grandma and her friends about it. They laughed and said that’s not what it’s like; we’ve had a lifetime to develop skills in order to compensate for our own losses. Okay, they didn’t say it quite like that, but in my brain, I heard selective optimization with compensation. Except our professor didn’t talk about that during the exercise. She just sent us out into the world for a day of “empathy building” or as I teach in my classes now, a day of well-intentioned mockery.
I’m now 45 years old. My joints hurt every day as I realize my metabolism just didn’t keep up the way I wanted it to. I also have to wear glasses now. I keep “cheaters” everywhere. And I get around and see just fine with my own accommodations and aids. These were gradual and expected changes, not “one day you’re a 21-year-old; the next day you’re 75.” I know many of us in the field use these exercises in our classes or seminars, but I still wonder if our students really experience what an older adult feels like. I doubt it. For me, at least as a student, I felt a combination of frustration and pity.
Fiske, Cuddy and colleagues (2002) developed the Stereotype Content Model, which puts demographic groups into one of four quadrants depending on the collective perceptions of their levels of warmth and competence. Older adults tend to be in the high warmth/low competence quadrant (along with individuals with physical disabilities). The most common emotion individuals feel for people in this quadrant is, in fact, pity. If that was what my professor was going for, then the aging simulation exercise was perfect. As a professor myself who teaches courses dealing with aging and ageism, pity is the last thing I want young folks to feel towards what some people consider the greatest generation. In fact, the physical declines of aging are only one area in which I teach my students. I also teach them about wisdom, generativity, procedural memory, crystallized intelligence, expertise, life satisfaction, spirituality, optimism, hardiness, etc. Why don’t we simulate these outcomes, which are also often associated with the latter part of the lifespan?
For those of you reading this who still engage in simulation exercises, I honestly do not blame you. It took reading a couple of articles for my Psychology of Hate class about doing this very thing for “disability awareness day” for me to recognize how short-sighted I have been about these activities (c.f., Lalvani & Broderick, 2013). As I was reading about the errors of my own thinking, I realized how institutionalized well-intentioned, empathy-building exercises are. It was truly an “aha” moment, except I was the 40-year-old professor, not the student. How did I not realize how poorly these exercises represent real life on my own? I think the answer lies in only thinking about the intentions of our behaviors; not the ultimate impact of them.
One of the most robust theories on how to break down stereotypes is Social Contact Theory, developed as an extension of Allport’s work (Pettigrew, 1998). Instead of having young folks simulate the stark contrast of being “old,” have them meet older adults. Have them do interviews, volunteer work and excursions with older adults. Have them ask questions of the older adults in their own families and of older adults in their friends’ families. I have my students do much of the above. They are required to do an interview with someone they know well and someone they do not. I show videos of my mother and her friends, all of whom are in their mid- to late 70s and none of whom “seem old,” according to my students. I have them write down what a 75-80-year-old woman looks and acts like, and then I counter that with real life examples, videos, pictures and experiences. When doing interviews, I have them create their own questions, which seems to be very challenging for them. They do not know how to talk to older adults. I ask them to pretend the person is 20. They can’t wrap their brain around talking to someone older in the same way you would talk to someone younger. After struggling, I give them my list of topics, such as relationships, family, friends, exercise, work, retirement, where they like to vacation, favorite music or TV programs, what kind of restaurants do they like, political or religious affiliation, etc. Older adults are the same as younger adults, with a little more experience. Some are more reserved; some more outgoing. They vary as much as, if not more, than any other age group. Once my students do the interviews, they come back with very different perceptions. I vividly remember one student saying, “My grandma watches 'American Horror Story,' Dr. B. We’re actually binging the next season together, me and my grandma.” Another told me her best friend’s boss, who is 71, “plays poker on Sunday evenings with some other guys; he invited me to join them, but they play for way more money than I have.” They each present their interviews to the class and talk about whether their stereotypes were confirmed or disconfirmed. In the last 10 years of doing this, I have not had one student say confirmed. Even in physically unhealthy older adults, the most common response I get to the assignment is that “they really aren’t that different than people I hang out with.” This gives them the “aha” experience. Students spend actual time with them. They get to ask them questions and listen to their answers. And although like most assignments, they initially dread it; they end up loving it.
Many of us do these interview types of assignments, so I know they are not ground breaking. My whole goal of this column is simply for us to think outside the box as educators. We often do what we have been taught without questioning its veracity. And again, we are so concerned with being well-intentioned that we often stop short of understanding an assignment’s impact. Our students do not know how to talk to the richest historians in our lives. Perhaps part of the problem is that in all of our empathy-building exercises, we make older adults a “them” instead of a future version of “us.” If I wanted someone to know what it felt like to be me, a 45-year-old lesbian, I wouldn’t want them to “pretend” to be one for a day. I imagine my racial minority friends would feel the same way about “racial simulation exercises” – in fact, we would call those what they are: racist. I don’t see the difference in aging simulations.
Picture it. 2019. All colleges and universities around the world. The class is Adult Development and Aging. The assignment is to “create a list of interview questions you’d want a future college student to ask the 70- or 80-year-old you. Now use that list to interview someone over the age of 70.” The result is variety, laughter, communication, social contact and maybe even empathy.
About the author
Toni L. Bisconti is an associate professor of psychology at The University of Akron.
References
Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(6), 878–902.
Lalvani, P., & Broderick, A. A. (2013). Institutionalized ableism and the misguided “Disability awareness day”: Transformative pedagogies for teacher education. Equity & Excellence in Education, 46(6), 468-483.
Pettigrew, T. F. (1998). Intergroup contact theory. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 65-85.