Aging and social perception: So far, more similarities than differences.

Abstract

Despite the pervasiveness of social perception in everyday life, relatively little is known about how the way we see ourselves and other people changes with age. The central questions to consider are if and how the perceiver’s age and the perceived person’s age affect fundamental processes of social perception. The current collection of 9 articles addresses both questions. Taking Brunswik’s lens model of social perception as an overarching theoretical framework, this introduction concludes on the basis of these 9 articles that age as a characteristic of the perceiver does not appear to have a strong effect on social judgments. In contrast, the age of the perceived person or group seems to affect the perceiver’s social inferences, interpretation of facial stimuli, or expectations of gains and losses in various domains of functioning. Thus, the articles presented here suggest that, although age is an important social category when perceiving another person, processes of social perception demonstrate more similarities than differences between age groups.