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AGEISM
Listing a Person’s Age in an Article Instantly Creates Bias
For better or worse, you immediately form an opinion.
This morning, I watched a news story about a man (65) who fell through the ice and was rescued by his dog (age unknown).
My first thought was, “What the hell was that old fart doing out on an ice-covered pond?”
Now, if it was a younger man, my inherent age bias would have probably made me react more sympathetically to his plight. (I would still have been more worried about the dog.)
Maybe he was practicing his slap shot. Maybe he was doing parkour.
Once you notice that every entertainment and most news articles list a person’s age, you can’t stop seeing it.
In a People Magazine article speaking with Sir Anthony Hopkins about his role in Silence of the Lambs:
… the 86-year-old, who won his first Best Actor Oscar for playing the psychiatrist and psychotic cannibal in the 1991 film based on Thomas Harris’s 1988 bestseller, reveals he hasn’t seen the movie in “years.”
Why exactly do I need to know that Anthony Hopkins is 86 years old?
