The purpose of this research was to provide further evidence for a social expertise view of adult age differences in social cognitive functioning. Of specific interest was the extent to which such a perspective can be used to explain the differential use of trait-diagnostic information by young and older adults in the construction of social judgments. The use of such information has been shown to increase with age (Hess & Auman, 2001), suggesting the presence of superior social expertise in older adults when compared to younger adults. In the current research, factors associated with accessibility to relevant knowledge?extremity of trait-relevant behaviors and the amount of diagnostic information?was manipulated to determine if the differences between presumed experts (i.e., older adults) and nonexperts (i.e., younger adults) were attenuated when the salience of trait-diagnostic information was increased. Young, middle-aged, and older adults studied a series of behavioral description describing fictitious target individuals. Study times for individual behaviors contained in these descriptions and impression ratings for each target person were examined. Results of this study replicate past research; specifically, diagnostic information was studied longer and had a stronger impact on impression ratings than did nondiagnostic information, and the impact of diagnosticity increased with age. Further, extreme cues served to enhance the already present diagnostic effects in study time, while also causing ratings of target individuals to be more negatively rated overall. The expected moderation of age differences in the use of diagnostic information based on the extremity of cues did not follow the expected direction. The relationship between age, extremity of cues, and the use of diagnostic information was not significant, suggesting that extremity did not serve to differentially enhance the accessibility of knowledge structures across age groups as originally expected. In addition, larger amounts of diagnostic information actually resulted in greater age differences in the impact of diagnostic information on impression ratings. This, along with the absence of age differences when minimal diagnostic information was available, may suggest that those with expert knowledge are only willing to use it when sufficient cues are presented. I additionally tested an alternative explanation for observed age differences in the use of diagnostic information. Specifically, I investigated whether age differences in implicit beliefs regarding the stability of traits might mediate age differences. No support was obtained for this hypothesis. In sum, although the results were not entirely consistent with expectations, they were generally supportive of an aging-related increase in social expertise as an explanation for age differences in social judgments.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-04082003-140602 |
| Date | 09 April 2003 |
| Creators | Leclerc, Christina Marie |
| Contributors | Thomas M. Hess, Christopher Mayhorn, Lynne Baker-Ward |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04082003-140602/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0017 seconds