HERES LOOKING AT YOU - THE RELATIVE EFFECT OF AGE AND ATTRACTIVENESS ON JUDGMENTS ABOUT MEMORY FAILURE

Young and elderly females read vignettes describing short-term, long-term, and very long-term memory failures. Each vignette was accompanied by a photograph of an attractive or unattractive young or elderly female target person. Subjects judged each vignette for possible attributions for the target's failure (ability, effort, task difficulty, luck, and attention). They also rated whether the failure was a sign of mental difficulty and whether medical and/or psychological evaluation was indicated. Failures of elderly and unattractive targets were attributed to lack of ability. Failures of young targets were attributed to lack of effort and lack of attention, whereas failures of attractive targets were attributed to task difficulty and lack of attention. Elderly and unattractive targets were judged as having greater mental difficulty and need for evaluation than young and attractive targets. In an a priori comparison, age predominated over attractiveness in memory failure judgments. Subjects, particularly the young, considered very long-term failures more indicative of mental difficulty and need for evaluation than short-term or long-term failures.