Implicit attitudes towards older people in Poland

The overriding aim of the article is to discuss research results about the affective and cognitive character of implicit attitudes to the older people in Poland and the differences in this area among people from the age groups of early, middle and late adulthood. The sample comprised 90 subjects, divided into three age sub-groups (N = 30; including 15 women and 15 men), representing early adulthood with a mean age of 28 years, middle adulthood with a mean age of 50 years and late adulthood with a mean age of 70 years. An experimental method based on priming paradigm was used. Target stimuli were the pictures of elderly and young people's faces. The priming stimuli consisted of words referring to features belonging to one of the two affective categories (positive vs. negative) and to one of the two semantic categories (stereotypically attributed vs. non-attributed to old people). The findings suggest that implicit attitudes towards older adults in Poland are neither negative nor positive. However, there is a tendency to perceive older people in a stereotypical way, which is the greatest in the age group of older adults. Moreover, negative stereotypes of the elderly people are stronger than the positive ones.