TPC Journal V8, Issue 2 - FULL ISSUE

106 The Professional Counselor | Volume 8, Issue 2 salient; and (d) self-referential views on aging are developed via pathways that may be both top- down (i.e., societal perspectives are passed on to the individual) and longitudinal (i.e., views on old age begin in childhood). Cuddy, Norton, and Fiske (2005) argued that groups within a society are often categorized based on two traits—warmth and competence—and the authors found that most participants rated older adults as warm, but incompetent. Contrary to the belief that ageism is only a concern in Western countries, Cuddy et al. reviewed a large-scale international study that included college students in Belgium, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. Across samples, participants viewed older adults as significantly more warm than competent, non-competitive, and having lower social status. Within their study, this trend persisted even when looking at cultures and countries that are typically described as more collectivist (i.e., Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea). Research indicates that ageism is prevalent within environments where older adults receive housing and health care services. In an ethnographic study on the impact of age and illness within a residential care setting, Dobbs et al. (2008) found that some family members, staff, and residents held negative attitudes about aging that resulted in an environment affected by ageism. In their study, examples of negative age bias included neglecting to gather resident input prior to making decisions, using infantilizing speech with older people, and stigmatizing residents because of dementia or physical disability. In a similar study completed within a multi-level care setting, Zimmerman et al. (2016) found that the use of multi-level, stepped care (i.e., adults with differing independence levels residing within the same setting) reinforced stigma related to age and health, with older adults differentiating among themselves based on which levels of care were required. Impact of Social Forces Scholars posit a wide range of hypotheses to explain the prevalence of ageism, but two systemic processes—modernization and medicalization—are identified in the literature as the most likely catalysts of negative attitudes toward aging (Cuddy & Fiske, 2002; Ng et al., 2015). In regard to modernization theory, Cuddy and Fiske (2002) explained that views of older adulthood have changed as a result of the shift from an agrarian society to an industrial society. Technological advances, increased literacy rates among young people, and a trend toward urbanization resulted in greater competition between young and old generations, as well as weakened intergenerational social ties between young people and their families of origin. The sum of these social changes led to decreased status for older people, resulting in the “warm, but incompetent” stereotype that is now associated with them (Cuddy et al., 2005). Relatedly, improvements in health care have extended the life span and increased the ratio of older to younger people. Previous research shows that as the ratio of older adults to younger adults increases, views about older adulthood become increasingly negative (Ng et al., 2015). Given that the number of older people will increase markedly in coming years, it is possible that negative attitudes toward older people will continue to grow unless intervention occurs. The second major social force described in the literature is the medicalization of aging, which refers to associating old age with a person’s physical health or illness, to the detriment of other aspects of well-being (Ng et al., 2015). The dominance of medical conceptualizations of old age is described as one of the “master narratives” associated with the modern study of aging (Biggs & Powell, 2001, p. 97). Although the causes of medicalization are many and complex, they can be summarized by the shift from viewing old age as a natural part of the life span to the viewpoint that old age, and even death itself,