Age schemas: Guides to processing information about the self

Previous research has shown that the cognitive generalizations we maintain about ourselves, termed self-schemas, influence how we process self-referent information. This study investigated the operation of self-schemas in the domain of age. In the first phase of the study, 50 young adult men and women completed a scale designed to measure their age schematicity. One week later, these same adults completed computer reaction time tasks in which they were asked to identity whether or not 40 age-related trait adjectives were self-descriptive and to respond to questions about their subjective age. It was predicted that adults who were schematic for age would make faster judgments about age-related material than those who were aschematic. The results supported the notion that age schemas operate like other schemas that guide the processing of information about the self.