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Yuho Shimizu, Seijo University, JapanAbstract
There is a growing need to reduce ageism toward older adults. Prior studies have developed interventions that present a brief explanatory text emphasizing that “everyone will become an older adult someday” and introducing empirical findings from Stereotype Embodiment Theory. While such interventions can reduce ageism, they may unintentionally increase prejudice toward other groups. This could occur if the message is misinterpreted as implying that it is acceptable to hold biases against social groups one is unlikely to join. Therefore, the present study examined whether this type of intervention might inadvertently reinforce racism, sexism, or ableism. A total of 564 Japanese participants took part in an online experiment and were randomly assigned to either an experimental group (n = 289) or a control group (n = 275). The experimental group read the explanatory text described above, while the control group read an unrelated passage. To test group differences, Bayesian analyses were conducted to support the null hypothesis of no effect. Bayesian regression analyses, controlling for age and gender, showed no group differences in racism (β = -.12, 95% Credible Interval [CI] [-.29, .05], Bayes Factor [BF] = 0.57), sexism (β = -.01, 95% CI [-.17, .15], BF = 0.21), or ableism (β = -.09, 95% CI [-.25, .08], BF = 0.37). These results suggest that the intervention based on Stereotype Embodiment Theory does not reinforce other forms of prejudice. Therefore, the intervention developed in previous research should be actively utilized in the future to reduce ageism.
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Conference: ACE2025Stream: Mind
This paper is part of the ACE2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Shimizu Y. (2026) Evaluating the Spillover Effects of an Ageism Reduction Intervention on Other Social Biases ISSN: 2186-5892 – The Asian Conference on Education 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 1803-1808) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2026.139
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2026.139
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