Race and Gender-Based Perceptions of Older Adults: Will the Youth Lead the Way?

Older individuals encounter the greatest racial/gender biases. It is unknown whether younger generations, who often lead culture shifts, have racial and gender biases against older populations. Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk’s crowdsourcing, we identified how an individual’s race and gender are associated with perceptions of individuals aged mid-60s. Participants were asked to rate photograph appearances on Likert Scale (1–10). Interactions between participant and photograph race and gender were assessed with mixed effects models. Delta represents rating differences (positive value higher rating for Whites or women, negative value higher rating for African-Americans or men). Among 1563 participants (mean 35 years ± 12), both non-Hispanic White (WP) and all Other race/ethnicity (OP) participants perceived African-American photos as more trustworthy [Delta WP -0.60(95%CI–0.83, − 0.37); Delta OP − 0.51(− 0.74,-0.28), interaction p = 0.06], more attractive [Delta non-Hispanic White participants − 0.63(− 0.97, − 0.29); Delta Other race/ethnicity participants − 0.40 (− 0.74, − 0.28), interaction p