ArticlePloS one2015
Increasing negativity of age stereotypes across 200 years: evidence from a database of 400 million words.
Article in PloS one, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Older adults and online health misinformation: a systematic literature review.BMC psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Scales used to assess ageism in the health care sector: a (COSMIN) systematic review of the measurement properties.BMC geriatrics · 2025Pooled it
- Determinants of Ageism against Older Adults: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Latent profile analysis of self-perceptions of ageing among Chinese community-dwelling older adults.Psychogeriatrics : the official journal of the Japanese Psychogeriatric Society · 2022Trial
- Trial
- Article
- Aging-Simulation Experience in Dental Education: Impact on Attitude and Empathy of Dental Students Towards Older People.Dentistry journal · 2026Article
- Changing self-perceptions of aging in China: a cohort analysis.European journal of ageing · 2025Article
- Effects of gender, education, contact with older adults and health-related jobs on memory control beliefs across the lifespan.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Owners' everyday interactions with their horse: Pain-related issues and those of veterinary concern.Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2025Article
- A French Adaptation and Validation of Retirement Semantic Differential (RSD).Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Youth is Prized in Medicine, Old Age is Valued in Law: Analysis of Media Narratives Over 200 Years.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Innovations for an Aging Society through the Lens of Patent Data.The Gerontologist · 2024Article
- Article
- Narratives of pregnancy across 19 Countries: Analysis of a 1.5-billion-word news media database.PloS one · 2024Article
- What do we really know about age-related stereotypes and well-being of older adults? A commentary on the state of the art.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- Emotion Regulation in Couples Across Adulthood.Annual review of developmental psychology · 2023Article
- The Impact of Learning Multiple Real-World Skills on Cognitive Abilities and Functional Independence in Healthy Older Adults.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2023Article
- Aging Stigma and the Health of US Adults Over 65: What Do We Know?Clinical interventions in aging · 2023Review
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Scholars argue about whether age stereotypes (beliefs about old people) are becoming more negative or positive over time. No previous study has systematically tested the trend of age stereotypes over more than 20 years, due to lack of suitable data. Our aim was to fill this gap by investigating whether age stereotypes have changed over the last two centuries and, if so, what may be associated with this change. We hypothesized that age stereotypes have increased in negativity due, in part, to the increasing medicalization of aging. This study applied computational linguistics to the recently compiled Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), a database of 400 million words that includes a range of printed sources from 1810 to 2009. After generating a comprehensive list of synonyms for the term elderly for these years from two historical thesauri, we identified 100 collocates (words that co-occurred most frequently with these synonyms) for each of the 20 decades. Inclusion criteria for the collocates were: (1) appeared within four words of the elderly synonym, (2) referred to an old person, and (3) had a stronger association with the elderly synonym than other words appearing in the database for that decade. This yielded 13,100 collocates that were rated for negativity and medicalization. We found that age stereotypes have become more negative in a linear way over 200 years. In 1880, age stereotypes switched from being positive to being negative. In addition, support was found for two potential explanations. Medicalization of aging and the growing proportion of the population over the age of 65 were both significantly associated with the increase in negative age stereotypes. The upward trajectory of age-stereotype negativity makes a case for remedial action on a societal level.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.