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Ageism
Chronological age is a lousy benchmark for making assumptions about the capacities and qualities of human beings, but that doesn’t stop us from doing it. Ageism, while generally regarded as a bias toward older folks, can affect just about any age group. Robert Butler, a psychiatrist, coined the term in 1969, comparing it to racism and sexism. His focus was on discrimination against and negative stereotypes about older people, both of which are endemic in our society. However, today, we recognize its broader impact.
Chronological age and emotional age are often two very different metrics. I know young people who are largely squared away in the feelings department, and seniors who have yet to leave their emotional adolescence. We recognize this intuitively. People may refer to those whose chronological and emotional ages are out of sync as “60 going on 16” or “15 going on 30,” and so on. Which calls into question the whole notion of what it means to be an adult, given the wildly varying degrees of maturity and judgment grown-ups display, from deliberative intelligence to abject stupidity.
Then there’s decision-making. Supposedly, we get better at it as we age and accumulate more life experience, the idea being that, on a fictitious wisdom scale, one’s trend line should rise in step with one’s chronological progression. In fact, decision-making doesn’t necessarily improve with increasing tenure on the planet, particularly among those set in their ways. As business guru Stephen Covey noted, “Some people say they have 20 years’ experience when, in reality, they have 1 years’ experience repeated 20 times.” For instance, many of us know adolescents or young adults who exhibit greater emotional maturity, life wisdom and direction than their parents. So, the real variables at play have more to do with smarts, both emotional and intellectual, as well as self-control and motivation, rather than years on Earth.
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Physical Functions
Then there are the proverbial and powerful assumptions about the impacts of age on physical functioning. So, exactly what is a 65-year-old supposed to look like and how physically vital or compromised should we assume them to be . . . again, based on a number? In addressing this, many of us lean on stereotypic answers, only to find our guesses shattered when meeting someone who dramatically departs from what we anticipated. Not wanting to undermine our cherished assumptions, we employ a mental sleight of mind called “confirmation bias” to label such individuals as outliers (e.g., “remarkable for her age”).
Look, there are 10-year-olds who can’t run a hundred yards without risking cardiac arrest and 80-somethings who finish marathons. Do the odds of dying increase in tandem with your advancing years? Yes, but not proportionally. Regardless of age, mortality doesn’t rise dramatically until one reaches a certain physical threshold or tipping point, such as a serious illness or accident, the cumulative impact of poor health habits, or substance addictions, all of which can occur in the young as well as old.
And, of course, there’s libido. Cultural mythology claims sexual desire peaks at certain ages, late teens to mid-20s for males and mid-to-late-30s for females. In fact, erotic longings involve far more than hormones, so assuming all teens are nymphomaniacs and all seniors couldn’t care less is poppycock. In popular culture, the erotic is almost always depicted as a province of youth, while research shows it’s at least as much a state of mind as of body.
Ageism, like sexism and racism, dehumanizes people and erases their individuality. Studies show, after race and gender, age is the next thing we most notice and subconsciously respond to when meeting someone. So, rather than being puppets on the strings of cultural stereotypes and biases related to the length of someone’s life, we better serve each other by suspending snap judgments in favor of open-minded observations. How mature is a person based on their years and physical exterior? Don’t assume.
Through the lenses of our biased perceptions, age truly becomes more than just a number. Too often, it represents a whole set of assumptions and prejudices that are just plain wrong.
