TY - JOUR
T1 - With age comes representational wisdom in social signals
AU - van Rijsbergen, Nicola
AU - Jaworska, Katarzyna
AU - Rousselet, Guillaume A.
AU - Schyns, Philippe G.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Ron Dotsch for making his code available and Steven McNair for help with participant recruitment. This research was supported by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) grant BB/J018929/1 to P.G.S., G.A.R., and N.v.R. and by a BBSRC DTP (WestBio) scholarship to K.J.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 The Authors
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2014/12/1
Y1 - 2014/12/1
N2 - In an increasingly aging society, age has become a foundational dimension of social grouping broadly targeted by advertising and governmental policies. However, perception of old age induces mainly strong negative social biases. To characterize their cognitive and perceptual foundations, we modeled the mental representations of faces associated with three age groups (young age, middle age, and old age), in younger and older participants. We then validated the accuracy of each mental representation of age with independent validators. Using statistical image processing, we identified the features of mental representations that predict perceived age. Here, we show that whereas younger people mentally dichotomize aging into two groups, themselves (younger) and others (older), older participants faithfully represent the features of young age, middle age, and old age, with richer representations of all considered ages. Our results demonstrate that, contrary to popular public belief, older minds depict socially relevant information more accurately than their younger counterparts.
AB - In an increasingly aging society, age has become a foundational dimension of social grouping broadly targeted by advertising and governmental policies. However, perception of old age induces mainly strong negative social biases. To characterize their cognitive and perceptual foundations, we modeled the mental representations of faces associated with three age groups (young age, middle age, and old age), in younger and older participants. We then validated the accuracy of each mental representation of age with independent validators. Using statistical image processing, we identified the features of mental representations that predict perceived age. Here, we show that whereas younger people mentally dichotomize aging into two groups, themselves (younger) and others (older), older participants faithfully represent the features of young age, middle age, and old age, with richer representations of all considered ages. Our results demonstrate that, contrary to popular public belief, older minds depict socially relevant information more accurately than their younger counterparts.
KW - Adolescent
KW - Adult
KW - Aged
KW - Aging/psychology
KW - Face
KW - Female
KW - Humans
KW - Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
KW - Middle Aged
KW - Nontherapeutic Human Experimentation
KW - Perception/physiology
KW - Psychological Tests
KW - Young Adult
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cub.2014.09.075
DO - 10.1016/j.cub.2014.09.075
M3 - Article (journal)
C2 - 25455036
AN - SCOPUS:84937504919
SN - 0960-9822
VL - 24
SP - 2792
EP - 2796
JO - Current biology : CB
JF - Current biology : CB
IS - 23
ER -