Memory performance of late middle-aged adults: Contrasting self-stereotyping and stereotype threat accounts of assimilation to age stereotypes

The goals of this study were to contrast stereotype threat and self-stereotyping accounts of behavioral assimilation to age stereotypes and to investigate the role of identity in that process. Based on random assignment, 89 adults in late middle-age (48-62 years; M = 54) were told that their memory performance would be compared to that of people over 70 (low threat condition), people under 25 (high threat condition), or they received no comparison information (control). Results showed that participants primed with the presumably non-threatening category "older adults" performed significantly worse on a word recall test than participants primed with the category "younger adults" and participants in the control condition. The results were moderated by implicit age identity-only participants who had begun making the identity transition into older adulthood were affected by the manipulation. These findings offer evidence that self-stereotyping and stereotype threat are distinct explanations for stereotype assimilation and offer support for a self-stereotyping account of behavioral assimilation to stereotypes.