Disociación entre atribución de discapacidad explícita e implícita hacia adultos mayores en estudiantes de psicología / Dissociation between psychology student's implicit and explicit disability atribution to elders

RESUMEN

Los adultos mayores son objeto de estereotipos negativos que pueden explorarse por medidas explícitas e implícitas. Dado que existen discrepancias entre ambas, es conveniente combinarlas. Son escasos los estudios sobre atribución de discapacidad hacia adultos mayores por parte de jóvenes en el ámbito educativo. El objetivo del estudio que se informa fue evaluar si existe una disociación entre las medidas implícitas y explícitas de atribución de discapacidad hacia adultos mayores en una cohorte de estudiantes de la Carrera de Psicología. Las actitudes explícitas se estudiaron con el Test de Evaluación de Actitudes hacia Adultos Mayores (EVAAM) y las implícitas, con un test de asociación implícita (TAI) en relación con categorías de capacidad / discapacidad, en combinaciones congruentes e incongruentes. Se correlacionaron ambas pruebas para verificar el grado de disociación entre ellos. Como resultado se observó que en el TAI, la combinación incongruente (capacidad + vejez) tuvo mayor tamaño de efecto implícito que la congruente (capacidad + juventud), demostrando la existencia de una atribución automática de discapacidad hacia adultos mayores. Los valores para la escala explícita fueron mejores y no correlacionaron con el TAI. Así se concluye que los adultos mayores reciben una atribución automática de discapacidad por parte de los estudiantes de Psicología, que no coincide con su preferencia explícita. Esto podría deberse a la intención de agradabilidad de los jóvenes, a la falta de introspección sobre representaciones implícitas o a una independencia de las representaciones explícitas e implícitas. Queda por considerar si las atribuciones implícitas y explícitas forman diferentes constructos, o son parte de uno solo, con valores positivos en el polo voluntario y negativos en el involuntario.

ABSTRACT

Negative attributions toward elders are a paramount feature creating an unfavorable trait which manifests itself as stereotypes and discriminatory behaviors. This turns to be more critical when those misattributions are covertly distributed in the general population. Negative attributions toward elders are greater than younger when comparing both groups, and are dependent on several factors such as amount of information provided, coherence of the data, age and even the year when the search was carried on, as recent studies show less differences between elders and young attributions compared with older ones, particularly on explicit measures. Probably this reflects the more acceptability and tolerance exhibited by new cohorts toward different social groups in such areas as ethnics, religion or sexuality. It is obvious that elders stereotypes must be explored using not only explicit but also implicit measures, which reveal more clearly automatic associations and attributions toward key social groups. As there are sound differences between both kinds of assessments, combination is highly recommended. There are few studies that have accomplished the investigation of disability attribution toward elders by young subjects in the field of Education using Implicit Association Tests (IAT). This may prove useful as ageism exists in the Psychology Career Programs, being studies about elders under-represented in the programs contents. Objectives: To evaluate whether dissociation between implicit and explicit disability attribution measures exists in a cohort of young university psychology students. Methods and instruments 210 subjects were included in the study (121 female and 89 men), who were recruited from students attending regular courses at the Faculty of Psychology on the city of Rosario (Argentina), aged from 24 to 29-year-old. Implicit attributions were assessed with the IAT that measures automatic association's strength between two core concepts (in the present study abilities /disabilities) and the two poles of an evaluative dimension (elderhood / youth). Stimulus are displayed on a computer screen and the subject has to associate core concept and attribute dimension faster when both are of equal valence (shorter latency). Subjects holding strong association between disability and elderhood have faster responses when those share the same key that has to be pressed to accomplish a valid answer. Latency spread between congruent (ability / youth) and incongruent (ability / elderhood) associations is accounted for the automatic strength of the implicit effect. Explicit attitudes were studied with the Attitudes toward Elders Evaluation Test and implicit ones using the Implicit Association Test with ability / disability categories in congruent and incongruent combinations. Both tests were correlated to disclose any dissociation between them. Dependent variable to measure implicit attitudes was the value of d which represents the size of the implicit effect between congruent and incongruent condition. A 2 (cate gories) x 2 (attributes) x 2 (dimensions) matrix was used, and independent variables were rotated between participants. Valence of attributes ranged from positive to negative and were associated with categories using as control factor the order of task congruence (block 3 congruent and block 6 incongruent). Dependent variable for explicit attitudes was the overall mean answers of the EVAAM (Adult Evaluation Scale). Results: In the IAT, the incongruent combination (ability old age) had a greater implicit size effect than the congruent one (ability youth), showing the existence of an automatic disability attribution toward elders. Results in the explicit scale were better and didn't correlate with IAT. Conclusions: Elders receive a Psychology student's automatic disability attribution, which doesn't match their explicit preference. This may be due to young students' agreeability intention, lack of introspection on implicit representations, or explicit and implicit representations independence. It remains to be investigated whether explicit and implicit attributions belong to different constructs or to only one, with positive values in the voluntary pole and negative values in the involuntary pole.