STEREOTYPED ATTITUDES TOWARD THE AGED IN WEST GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES.

The article cites a study which focuses on stereotyped attitudes toward the aged in West Germany and the United States. It has also been noted that the attitudes of old and young toward aging are interrelated and that cultural rejection results in self-rejection of the old, with its concomitants of personality disorganization and regression. Although respect for the elderly has been traditionally high in Germany, a steady decline in patriarchal sentiments beginning in the postwar years suggests that the actual relations between old and young in West Germany may be far more disharmonious and similar to those in the United States than has generally been acknowledged. Agreements and disagreements in the attitudes toward old people were assessed with a German translation of the Golde-Kogan Sentence Completion Procedure. This instrument, consisting of 20 incomplete sentences dealing with various aspects of old people's lives and the subjects personal experience with elderly persons, was administered to 67 older and 73 younger females of comparable intelligence and social background in three medium-sized West Germany cities.