Educational Gerontology, 30: 457–479, 2004

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Inc.

ISSN: 0360-1277 print/1521-0472 online
DOI: 10.1080/03601270490445078

INTERGENERATIONAL CONTACT, ATTITUDES, AND

STEREOTYPES OF ADOLESCENTS AND OLDER PEOPLE

David S. Meshel
Richard P. MCGlynn
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA

Contradictory findings characterize the literature on the efficacy of intergenera-

tional programs that bring children and older persons together for joint activities
to promote more positive attitudes and stereotypes. Nor is it clear whether cross-
generational attitudes are negative to begin with. The research reported in this
paper operationalized the constructs of attitudes and stereotypes by employing
ideographic measures based on the attitude model of Fishbein and Ajzen (1975)
and adopted the principles of the contact hypothesis in organizing a cross-age
program. Sixty-three middle school adolescents (age 11–13) were randomly
assigned to cross-age contact, didactic instruction, or control conditions for a
6-week program. Overall, adolescents and older persons held generally positive
attitudes and stereotypes of each other. Relative to the control group, the contact
group adolescents’ attitudes toward older people became more positive. There was
no change in the didactic group. Following contact, the older people showed more
positive attitudes toward younger people and scored higher on a measure of
life satisfaction.

Intergenerational or cross-age programs that bring children and older

people together have become more common in the United States
because they help fill a variety of personal and societal needs engen-
dered by an increasingly age-segregated society (Jantz, Seefeldt,

This article is based on a dissertation completed by the first author under the
direction of the second author. The contributions of the members of the dissertation
committee, Susan Kashubeck, Tim Melchert, and Susan Hendrick are gratefully
acknowledged. Thanks are due to Gail Garber, Rosemary, Tom Belloti, Mary Worman,
Marvin Cato, Terri Assenbacher, and Jason Cheadle for their invaluable assistance.
Address correspondence to David S. Meshel, 124 Surrey Lane, San Rafael, CA 94903.
E-mail: davidm1365@aol.com

457
458 D. S. Meshel and R. P. McGlynn

Galper, & Serock, 1976). Although children are traditionally socialized

from a very early age to interact primarily within their own age group
(Peacock & Talley, 1984), societal changes such as high divorce rates,
increased family mobility, technological advancements, and rise in
single parent families have all served to escalate the segregation of the
generations (Angelis, 1992). The need for cross-age programs is fur-
ther highlighted by the aging of the United States population (U.S.
Bureau of the Census, 1989).
Intergenerational programs have been advocated by the federal
government through the Foster Grandparent Program (Nash, 1968)
and the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging (1987), but
the majority of intergenerational programs have been initiated and
funded by individual states (Murphy, 1984). Programs have tradi-
tionally been initiated in child and adult daycare centers (Struntz &
Reville, 1985), nursing homes (Kocarnik & Ponzetti, 1986), elementary
and secondary schools (Allred & Dobson, 1987), and nursery schools
(Haber & Short-DeGraff, 1990). They involve a variety of creative and
nurturing interactions, such as storytelling, arts and music, and
writing letters.
If children have negative attitudes and stereotypes of older people,
these programs have the potential for positive change. Our study
sought to assess these attitudes and stereotypes and the changes in
them that result from an intergenerational program.
A number of investigations of attitudes toward older people (see
Meshel, 1997, for a complete review) have found that individuals of
different ages hold mixed to negative attitudes toward older people
and the aging process (e.g., Caspi, 1984; Hummert, 1990; Sanders,
Montgomery, Pittman, & Balkwell, 1984; Seefeldt, 1987; Tuckman &
Lorge, 1953). Seminal research examining younger persons’ attitudes
toward older people was conducted by Hickey, Hickey, and Kalish
(1968) who asked third grade students from socioeconomically diverse
schools to write a short paper describing an ‘‘old person like your
grandparents.’’ The authors found that children as young as eight
years old held primarily negative attitudes toward older persons.
Dobrosky and Bishop (1986) elicited children’s attitudes about old
people using a non-reactive thought-listing question. They concluded
that most children held a restricted view of older people, describing
them in terms of their physical appearance, behaviors, age, and pre-
vious personal interactions. Page, Olivas, Driver, and Driver (1981)
interviewed children about their attitudes toward older people and the
aging process. The authors found that younger people characterized
older people based on their physical characteristics (e.g., wrinkles,
false teeth, and gray hair) and that three quarters of the younger
 Intergenerational Contact 459

sample preferred to be with younger people and two thirds expressed

negative feelings about their own aging.
Other investigations have concluded that younger persons actually
hold mixed to positive attitudes toward older people (Kite & Johnson,
1988). Crockett and Hummert (1987) reviewed the literature exam-
ining different age groups’ attitudes toward older people and found
individuals hold a variety of negative, positive, and mixed attitudes
and stereotypes regarding older people. They concluded that the
overall ratings of older people in the majority of studies were actually
slightly positive. Older people, however, were consistently viewed
more negatively when compared with younger people and negatively
biased beliefs about old age still outnumbered positive ones.
Overall, the attitudes of different age groups toward older people do
not appear to be overwhelmingly negative. Although the majority of
investigations reveal a slightly positive orientation in the young
regarding the old, there does appear room for a positive shift in these
attitudes.
The disparity in findings in the attitude literature reflects a lack of
methodological rigor and conceptual clarity. First, there is wide var-
iation in the ways in which older persons are characterized in the
various attitude inventories (Slotterback & Saarnio, 1996) from pho-
tographs of unfamiliar older men and women to sketches of only
female older people. Kite and Johnson (1988) maintained that nega-
tive attitudes toward old people may be a function of poorly worded
instruments that cue participants to evaluate older people based on
their physical appearance and competence rather than on their per-
sonality traits. Second, a negative evaluation of older persons often
occurs when older persons are being compared to younger persons on
specific traits (Crockett & Hummert, 1987; Kite and Johnson, 1988).
Third, wide variability exists in the way the attitude construct
is operationalized and measured (Crockett & Hummert, 1987;
Slotterback & Saarnio, 1996). Several investigations have used mea-
sures whose psychometric properties have not been thoroughly tested
(Crockett & Hummert, 1987), and the attitude construct is used
interchangeably with such terms as perceptions, awareness, inten-
tions, beliefs, stereotype, ageism, and prosocial behaviors.
The present study attempted to improve the measurement of atti-
tudes by employing a consistent conceptual framework. The majority
of cross-age investigations have employed the tripartite or hierarchical
model of attitudes. This model, as described by McGuire (1985), pro-
poses that attitudes have discrete cognitive, affective, and conative
response tendencies signifying conceptually distinct components.
Instruments constructed according to this multidimensional model
460 D. S. Meshel and R. P. McGlynn

often attempt to measure each of the three distinct attitude compo-

nents.
Unfortunately, the components of the tripartite model of attitudes
are difficult to distinguish conceptually and difficult to measure and
integrate into a measure of the overall attitude concept. As Fishbein
and Ajzen (1975) pointed out, defining attitude in terms of affective,
cognitive, and behavioral components suggests that almost any mea-
sure could be construed as a measure of an attitude. Moreover the
model begs the question of the relationship between the components,
such as the relationship between attitudes and behavior, which has
been a major focus of research since at least the 1930s (Eagly &
Chaiken, 1993).
Because of the conceptual ambiguity of the tripartite model and
because it does not appear to offer any distinct advantages over the
more parsimonious unidimensional model (Cacioppo, Petty, & Geen,
1989), the latter was adopted for the current study. The unidimen-
sional or causal chain model (Ajzen, 1985; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975)
defines an attitude as ‘‘the amount of affect for or against something
. . . [or] a person’s favorable or unfavorable evaluation of an object’’
(Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975, pp. 11–12). The causal chain model regards
cognition, affect, and behavior as distinct antecedents and con-
sequences of an attitude and considers the attitude itself to an overall
evaluative summary response (Cacioppo, Petty, & Geen, 1989;
Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975).
The attitude construct should be distinguished from related terms
(e.g., beliefs, intention, prejudice, opinion, perceptions, stereotype) by
its evaluative nature, but such distinctions are often blurred in the
literature on cross-generational attitudes. An attitude toward a person
or object is appropriately measured by having an individual place an
object on a bipolar affective or evaluative dimension (Fishbein &
Ajzen, 1975). Beliefs can be defined as a person’s knowledge or infor-
mation about an attitude object. Beliefs vary in their strength and
thus are best measured by placing them on a subjective probability
dimension (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). The model maintains that atti-
tudes are based on an individual’s salient beliefs such that attitudes
are related to an individual’s set of beliefs about an attitude object but
not necessarily to any specific belief. Similarly, a person’s attitude may
be related to a set of intentions to behave certain ways toward an
attitude object but not necessarily to any single intention.
Research on stereotypes regarding older persons have revealed the
existence of multiple positive and negative stereotypes (Brewer & Lui,
1984; Hummert, 1990; Schmidt & Boland, 1986). Brewer, Dull, and
Lui (1981) examined college students’ perceptions of older people and
 Intergenerational Contact 461

found that they sorted photographs into three intuitively derived

types. They included the ‘‘grandmother type’’ (the homemaker who
enjoys children and animals), the ‘‘elder statesman type’’ (dignified
and noble gentleman), and the ‘‘senior citizen type’’ (alienated and
passive individual of either sex in an institution). These findings lend
support for the idea that multiple stereotypes exist for different types
of older persons and that the category older adult includes both
positive and negative subcategories.
Relative to other age groups, there has been a paucity of sys-
tematic empirical research investigating children’s and adolescents’
stereotypes of older people. A number of investigations indicate that
children hold negative stereotypes regarding older people (e.g.,
Hickey et al., 1968; Jantz et al., 1976). Isaacs and Bearison (1986)
found that stereotypes about age, race, and gender develop in chil-
dren around the age of six. Hickey et al. employed a story writing
technique to assess the stereotypes of third-grade children regarding
an old person and found that children described older people pri-
marily in terms of physical characteristics (‘‘feeble,’’ ‘‘walk slowly,’’
and ‘‘inactive’’) and social stereotypes (‘‘nice,’’ ‘‘kind,’’ ‘‘mean,’’ ‘‘bossy,’’
and ‘‘friendly’’).
The most parsimonious and conceptually clear definition of the term
‘‘stereotype’’ in contemporary social psychology (see Stangor and
Lange, 1994 for a review) regards stereotypes as socially shared or
salient ‘‘characteristics that are descriptive of, attributed to, or asso-
ciated with members of social groups or categories’’ (Stangor & Lange,
1994, p. 361). As with the attitude concept, this unambiguous defini-
tion stands in contrast to the variety of constructs and measures in
studies of stereotypes of older people. There is currently disagreement
in the social psychology literature as to whether stereotypes refer to
the mental representation itself (e.g., old people) or to the items or
traits associated with the category label (e.g., fussy, friendly). Fol-
lowing Stangor and Lange, we adopted the latter view.
In the majority of studies, stereotype items were derived intuitively
by the researcher, rather than from the participants themselves
(younger persons). This method was adopted in the current investi-
gation because it is consistent with the Fishbein and Ajzen (1975)
model and provides a clearer picture of the idiographic nature of
adolescents’ beliefs, attitudes, and stereotypes regarding older people.
According to Stangor and Lange (1994), once formed, stereotypes
are resistant to change, and direct contact often strengthens the pre-
existing associations between the target group and stereotypical
properties. Stangor and Lange also maintain that stereotypes are
functional because they enable the individual to develop expectancies
462 D. S. Meshel and R. P. McGlynn

about their environment. These expectancies ultimately permit the

individual to understand and predict behaviors.
The pernicious effects of stereotypes have traditionally been coun-
tered by eliminating existing beliefs about the social group, by ‘‘ste-
reotypic dilution’’ (Hilton & Fein, 1989), or by making out-group and
in-group representations more similar (Devine, 1989). Cross-age pro-
grams are ideally suited to meet these objectives because older and
younger people often discover that they have many things in common
and can learn from each other.
Cross-age research has suggested that intergenerational contact is
the critical factor in promoting more positive attitudes and stereotypes
regarding older people and the aging process (e.g., Lambert,
Dellmann-Jenkins, & Fruit, 1990; Lowenthal & Egan, 1991; Proller,
1989; Seefeldt, 1987). Murphy-Russell, Die, and Walker (1986) exam-
ined the effects of discussion with peers, direct contact with a non-
stereotypic older target, and increasing knowledge of older persons.
All three methods were effective in producing positive attitude change
toward older people with the direct contact approach proving to be the
most effective. Aday, McDuffie, and Sims (1993) matched 19 older
residents of a senior citizen’s center with 19 teenagers for activities
such as reminiscing groups, puppet shows, basket making, and arts
and crafts. The adolescents’ attitudes toward older people became
more positive after an eight-week intergenerational project.
Olejnik and LaRue (1981) found that adolescents’ attitudes toward
older people became less negative and stereotyped after two months of
daily intergenerational contact during a school lunch period. However,
younger persons were less likely to want to have future interactions
with older people after contact. Importantly, this counterintuitive
finding is consistent with Fishbein and Ajzen’s (1975) notion that
intentions or behaviors are determined largely by the attitude toward
the specific behavior, rather than by the global attitude toward an
attitude object.
Social psychologists have long recognized that social contact
between segregated groups can facilitate more accurate perceptions
and concomitant reductions in prejudice only under certain conditions
(Allport, 1954; Amir, 1969; Pettigrew, 1998). Indeed, several investi-
gations have failed to find positive shifts in attitudes and stereotypes
following cross-age contact (e.g., Auerbach & Levenson, 1977; Baggett,
1981; Seefeldt, 1987). Allport’s (1954) contact hypothesis laid out four
conditions deemed necessary for intergroup contact to reduce pre-
judice: equal status contact, common goals, cooperative interaction,
and institutional support. Translating these principles from
interethnic situations in which they have generally been tested to
 Intergenerational Contact 463

intergenerational contact is not entirely straightforward (Seefeldt,

1987), but negative findings regarding intergenerational contact seem
to be generally consistent with the contact hypothesis.
Some of the disparate findings in the attitude and stereotype lit-
erature may result from variations in the nature and quality of
naturally occurring cross-age contact. Ivester and King (1977) found
no relationship between contact with grandparents and positive atti-
tudes toward older people suggesting that cross-age contact by itself
does not automatically lead to a promotion of more positive attitudes.
The amount of joint activity in activity groups involving children and
older people was positively related to attitude change among children
in a study by Pinquart, Wenzel, and Soerensen (2000). Auerbach and
Levenson (1977) found that younger persons who had older persons in
their classes held more negative attitudes after cross-age contact.
Competition for grades and classroom time, however, may have cre-
ated an antagonistic atmosphere rather than an intimate and reci-
procally rewarding cross-age experience.
Corbin, Kagan, and Metal-Corbin (1987) had sixth-grade students
interact through songs, dance, and discussion with older persons as
part of a seven-day program on aging. Younger persons’ attitudes and
use of physical and psychological descriptors for the older adults
became more negative. This finding may have resulted from exposing
children primarily to infirm older people with a variety of health
problems. The lack of equal status between the cohorts in the study
may explain the increase in negative attitudes toward older persons
(Seefeldt, 1987).
Seefeldt (1987) found that children from her contact group held
more negative attitudes toward both their own aging and older people
than a control group without such contact. This finding also may be
explained by the lack of ‘‘equal status’’ between the older and younger
participants. Older participants were all infirm and dependent while
the younger participants were relatively healthy and self-sufficient.
Also, contact participants did not work toward a common super-
ordinate goal. Baggett (1981) and Chappell (1977) also failed to find
positive shifts in attitudes and stereotypes following cross-age contact.
Some researchers are now turning to the contact hypothesis to
improve the structure, implementation, and evaluation of inter-
generational programs designed to promote more positive attitudes
and stereotypes regarding older people and the aging process
(Seefeldt, 1987). To date, only two investigations have designed an
intergenerational program in accordance with the contact hypothesis
principles. Couper, Sheehan, and Thomas (1991) employed a quasi-
experimental design in which adolescents interacted with mostly
464 D. S. Meshel and R. P. McGlynn

female older persons for five hours during a one-day workshop. Par-
ticipants interacted in a variety of small group activities such as
problem solving, interpersonal communication, and value clarification
exercises. The study used a variety of attitude measures that
demonstrated that participation in the intergenerational program
improved adolescents’ attitudes toward older people.
McGowan and Blankenship (1994) developed a Life Histories Pro-
ject that involved a semester-long intergenerational activity. Younger
persons met weekly with older persons in order to obtain the elder
persons life history. The intervention focused on dialogic contact in
order to produce ontological change (change in self-understanding)
that would ultimately lead to a less stereotypical and more positive
understanding of old people and the aging process. Intimate contact
with equal status was achieved through a biographical storytelling
task. The life history paper required the active participation of both
groups to complete (superordinate goal). Most students saw them-
selves as benefiting from the cross-age experience and described older
persons as a valuable source of emotional support.
Although the majority of intergenerational programs do not expli-
citly measure older persons’ attitudes or their experience of the
intergenerational activity, it is widely believed that they benefit from
the experience (Seefeldt, 1987). The limited number of investigations
on older persons’ attitudes toward younger targets have found that
seniors hold largely positive attitudes toward younger persons
(Seefeldt, Jantz, Serock, & Bredekamp, 1982). Older people typically
report that they cherish the attention, affection, and opportunity to
share their life experiences. For example, Proller (1989) evaluated
Dade County Public Schools Adoptive Grandparent Program (AGP).
When children increased their contact to weekly visits, frail older
persons showed a significant decrease in their negative attitudes
toward children and experienced an increase in self-esteem and a
decrease in depression. Pinquart, Wenzel and Soerensen (2000) also
reported that older adults’ attitudes became more positive toward
participating children after they engaged in joint activities.
The study reported in this paper assessed youngster’s attitudes and
stereotypes of older persons and extended investigation of the contact
hypothesis to intergenerational programming. Many cross-age pro-
grams appear to be effective. However, investigators have often found
either no differences or increased negative attitudes and stereotypes
among younger persons regarding older people following contact.
Therefore, the present study explicitly defined the constructs of atti-
tude and stereotype, used attitude and stereotype measures consistent
with the theoretical constructs, and used contact hypothesis principles
 Intergenerational Contact 465

to organize and evaluate an intergenerational program designed to

promote more positive attitudes and stereotypes between older and
younger persons. The design of the study included not only a contact
group and a no activity control group but also a didactic control group
in order to assess the role, if any, of increased knowledge about the
elderly in the effects of contact.
When implementing the conditions specified by the contact
hypothesis, equal status within the contact group was achieved by
selecting intimate and reciprocally enjoyable activities (e.g., painting
to music, hobby sharing, and talent show). These activities provided a
superordinate goal in that they required the presence of both age-
groups to complete. The individual weekly activities, in addition to a
talent show, were non-competitive and organized in a way to promote
mutual sharing and cooperation.

METHOD
Design and Participants
From a list of students from three classrooms in a Midwestern public
middle school, 73 sixth and seventh grade adolescents between the
ages of 11 and 13 were randomly selected. Participation in the study
was voluntary. Parental consent to participate was received from 67
students. Approximately equal numbers of boys and girls were ran-
domly assigned to one of three conditions (contact, didactic, or control).
Four of these children voluntarily withdrew before the study began
resulting in a sample of 63 (34 female and 29 male) younger partici-
pants, 21 per condition.
Twenty-one older (age 60 and older) volunteers from a senior citizen
center situated in the same public middle school participated. Four
older persons withdrew from the study, leaving a sample of 17. Of
these, eight were over 75 years old, seven were between 66–75 years
of age, and two were between the ages of 60 and 65; 5 were male and
12 female.

Protocol
The younger participants completed the pretest measures in two
separate classrooms and the older persons worked on the pretest
packet in their senior center. Participants were asked to fill out the
pretest packet in the order it was arranged: a demographic ques-
tionnaire followed by belief-elicitation (younger participants only), an
attitude measure, and a life satisfaction scale. The day following the
466 D. S. Meshel and R. P. McGlynn

pretest, younger participants rated the items they generated during

the belief-elicitation procedure.
Upon completion of the pretest measures, each adolescent was
randomly assigned to either the contact, didactic, or control group.
Participants were informed that they would be in the same groups for
an hour a week for six consecutive weeks. Each group was facilitated
by an assistant researcher.
The contact group was composed of 21 adolescents and 21 older
persons in three intergenerational dyads. Three older persons with-
drew after the pretest and one withdrew after the first contact session.
The children in these dyads were assigned to other dyads, resulting in
four intergenerational triads (two younger and one older person) and
13 dyads (one younger and one older person) whose members inter-
acted for one hour each week in a variety of activities. Contact group
members were informed about each activity one week in advance and
were given 15–20 minutes at the end of each session to plan the next
activity and the talent show with their partner(s). Participants whose
cross-age partner was absent for a particular activity were paired with
other dyads for that week.
The first scheduled interaction was designed to have both young
and old participants get to know each other. Once paired, participants
were given a sheet with a list of questions designed to familiarize
themselves with each other. Younger and older participants took turns
asking each other about their names, backgrounds, interests, early life
experiences, school experiences, hobbies, and so forth. The last ten
minutes of session one were spent introducing the talent show idea.
The second session involved sharing stories and answering questions
about a particular object of interest that participants had been asked
to bring. Participants also were asked to visit other tables to learn
about what other people brought. The third session had participants
painting to music from the older and younger generations, for exam-
ple, the ‘‘Macarena’’ (younger generation) and songs by Bing Crosby
(older generation). For the fourth session participants brought a
favorite dish that they made during the previous week. During the
intergenerational lunch, participants were encouraged to share
recipes, favorite foods, and cooking experiences. The fifth session
involved final preparation for the talent show. Participants made
props for their skits and rehearsed their short presentations.
The superordinate goal for the present investigation was a talent
show developed and presented by cross-age pairs or triads at the sixth
and final activity session. Many of the participants decided to colla-
borate with other cross-age groups in the production of a skit. The
content of the specific skit or presentation was determined by
 Intergenerational Contact 467

consensus. The only guidelines for the presentations were that they
reflect the unique interests, abilities, and relationship of the particular
intergenerational partners. The talent show was presented to all
contact group participants as well as family members, teachers, and
school administrators. There were ten skits each lasting about five to
eight minutes. The skits were diverse in scope and included such
things as a scene in a play, a demonstration of magic, singing, and
charades. Afterwards, participants talked to their partners about
what the experience was like for them, and said goodbye. Older and
younger participants were brought to two separate locations to com-
plete the posttest measures.
Contact hypothesis criteria (e.g., equal status, intergroup coopera-
tion) were encouraged by having the two age groups make collabora-
tive decisions regarding the different contact activities and the
superordinate goal (talent show skit). In addition, each activity
required the active participation of both age cohorts to complete. For
example, during the show and tell activity, both younger and older
participants were required to bring in an object of interest and talk
about it. Equal status and intimacy was further achieved by having
the latter portion of each activity set aside for the cross-age pair to
share their unique ideas and talents in preparation for the talent
show.
A didactic group of 21 students was involved in a variety of edu-
cational activities designed to increase their knowledge and sensitiv-
ities regarding older persons and the aging process. In the first session
participants were paired up and encouraged to talk about the types of
personal experiences they have had with older people. During the
second week, participants were asked to imagine themselves as older
people and to draw a picture of what they imagine they would look and
be like at age 60. They shared their thoughts and pictures with the
rest of the group. For the third activity, participants formed four
groups and each one made a collage from magazines and newspapers
about older people to be presented to the entire group. The research
assistant then facilitated a discussion about beliefs, stereotypes, and
myths about aging.
During the fourth activity, each didactic group member volunteered
for a particular aging simulation. For example, one student spent the
entire activity time in a wheelchair to simulate disability and another
had his arm wrapped tightly to his shoulder to simulate loss of func-
tioning due to a stroke. Participants were required to perform simple
tasks and were asked to speak about how it felt to have a physical
limitation. The fifth session involved continued discussion of the
simulation exercise with handouts that discussed various myths and
468 D. S. Meshel and R. P. McGlynn

facts about older persons and the aging process. Participants debated
a variety of issues relating to older people (e.g., should older people
drive). The final session involved discussions about the issue of death
and dying. In small groups headed by a teacher or research assistant,
students related stories about an older person they knew who died or
was in the process of dying and were encouraged to share their fears
about aging.
A control group of 21 students watched educational movies unre-
lated to the topic of aging and also were given free time to play games.
Participants in all three conditions were asked not to share their
individual group experiences until the debriefing on the final activity
day. Posttest measures, which included all the pretest measures
except the demographic items, were obtained immediately for all three
groups after the sixth and final scheduled activity session. At posttest,
all participants also evaluated each activity on a number of dimen-
sions and rated the program overall on a seven-point scale with regard
to equal status contact on the item, ‘‘both me and my partner(s) had an
equal say in the different activities we did together.’’

Measures
The measures used in the current investigation were first piloted with
a group of 10 adolescents participating in a summer program and four
older persons from a senior citizen center.
Attitudes toward older (completed by adolescents) and younger
(completed by older participants) age groups were measured on five
seven-point semantic differential scales: friendly-unfriendly, good-bad,
pleasant-unpleasant, wise-foolish, and wonderful-terrible.
To elicit stereotypic beliefs about older people, younger participants
were asked to respond with one, two, three, or four word phrases to the
probe: ‘‘I think most older people are . . .’’ From these responses, a list of
idiosyncratic and socially shared beliefs about older people was com-
plied. The items generated by the belief-elicitation procedure were
then reduced by the first author and two graduate students to identify
overlap, commonness, uniqueness, and redundancy (Giorgi, 1985).
Coding differences were discussed and resolved. Particular effort was
made to retain the language of the participants and include a wide
variety of responses.
The following day, the reduced list of socially shared or prototypical
items was randomly ordered and returned to the younger participants
for rating. Items that were not endorsed by at least 10% of the ado-
lescent sample were declared idiosyncratic and returned for rating
only to the specific participant(s) who generated them. There were 30
 Intergenerational Contact 469

unambiguous items that exceeded the 10% criterion for stereotypes

and zero to six idiosyncratic items per individual.
The ratings made to produce the stereotype measure were based on
the model of Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), which holds that beliefs can be
measured by multiplying belief strength (how characteristic each item
is of older people) by evaluation (how positive or negative the item is
perceived to be). Ratings of both belief strength and evaluation were
made on 73 to þ 3 scales at both pre- and posttest. The two ratings
for each item were multiplied and the products were summed across
all items rated by a particular participant to produce an overall eva-
luative stereotype score.
Older persons’ global judgments regarding their life satisfaction
were assessed by the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener,
Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985). Younger participants’ life satis-
faction was measured by a version of the SWLS constructed by the
first author by simplifying the language to be understandable to
adolescents. The SWLA consists of five global statements rated on
a seven-point agree–disagree scale. The SWLS has a Cronbach’s alpha
of .87, a two-month test-retest reliability of .82, and good construct
validity (Pavot & Diener, 1993).

RESULTS
Manipulation Check
At the time of the posttest, both adolescents (M ¼ 2.57) and older per-
sons (M ¼ 2.11) in the contact condition indicated substantial agree-
ment (1 ¼ strongly agree; 7 ¼ strongly disagree) with the proposition
that they and their partners had an equal say in the joint activities.

ADOLESCENTS
Attitudes
The five semantic differential items had a Cronbach’s alpha of .89 at
pretest and .92 at posttest, so analyses were performed on the
aggregated items. Means and standard deviations for the attitude
measure can be found in Table 1 where higher scores represent more
favorable attitudes. The means, 5.88 overall on a seven-point scale,
suggest that younger participants held favorable attitudes toward
older people.
A 3 (contact, didactic, and control group)
2 (pretest and posttest)
mixed factor ANOVA was performed on the mean attitude scores.
There were no significant main effects for condition, F(2, 60) ¼ .63,
470 D. S. Meshel and R. P. McGlynn

TABLE 1 Adolescents: Means and Standard Deviations for Attitude, Life-

Satisfaction, and Stereotype Measures

Time Attitude Life-Satisfaction Stereotypes

Contact Condition
Pretest 5.89 (0.82) 28.90 (5.07) 2.85 (2.13)
Posttest 6.18 (1.00) 28.28 (5.39) 2.61 (2.35)
Didactic Condition
Pretest 5.66 (1.26) 27.66 (5.89) 3.58 (2.28)
Posttest 5.80 (1.01) 27.61 (5.02) 3.08 (2.04)
Control Condition
Pretest 6.09 (0.75) 30.14 (2.88) 3.23 (1.66)
Posttest 5.68 (0.92) 29.28 (3.79) 2.74 (1.91)

Note. Standard deviations in parentheses. Higher means indicate the more positive
pole. Attitudes scores are the mean of five 7-point semantic differential items. Stereotype
scores are belief strength multiplied by evaluation summed over 30 items.

p > .05 or time, F (1, 60) ¼ .01, p > .05, but there was a significant
condition by time interaction, F (2, 60) ¼ 3.47, p < .05 indicating rela-
tively more positive attitude change in the contact group. Simple
effects showed participants in the control group had significantly
more negative attitudes at posttest than at pretest, F(1, 20) ¼ 4.31,
p < .05, while contact participants’ attitudes became more positive
from pretest to posttest, though not significantly so, F (1, 20) ¼ 2.10,
p > .05. There was no significant change in the didactic condition, F(1,
20) ¼ 0.53, p > .05.

Life Satisfaction
The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the five-item life satisfaction scale
were .71 on pretest and .76 on posttest, so the five life satisfaction
statements were summed. Means and standard deviations for the life
satisfaction measure can be found in Table 1 where higher scores
represent more positive life satisfaction. With a positive range of scores
from 14–35, the means suggest that adolescents reported high levels of
life satisfaction at pretest and posttest. There were no significant effects
for condition, F (2, 60) ¼ 1.17, p > .05, time, F (1, 60) ¼ 1.12, p > .05, or
condition by time, F (2, 60) ¼ .25, p > .05. The life satisfaction measure
correlated .28 at pretest and .20 on posttest with the attitude measure.

Stereotypes
Younger participants generated 124 beliefs about older persons.
Thirty-one of the 124 beliefs generated were endorsed by at least seven
 Intergenerational Contact 471

adolescents and were declared stereotypic. One item (‘‘like younger

people’’) was discarded because its meaning was ambiguous to the
participants. Based on their evaluations, 20 of the 30 stereotypes were
positive items (e.g., kind, nice, knowledgeable), and 10 neutral to
negative (e.g., less active, lonely, mean).
A score for each of the 30 stereotypic items was computed by
multiplying its evaluation (how positive or negative the item was
considered) by its strength of association (how much the descriptor
was or was not like an older person). Scores for each stereotypical item
had a possible range of 79 to þ 9 with higher (positive) scores
signifying more favorable stereotypes of older people. Means and
standard deviations for the stereotype measure can be found in
Table 2. Overall, the participants’ stereotypes of older people were
rather positive (3.02).
A 3
2 mixed ANOVA for the 30 aggregated stereotype items
revealed a significant shift toward more negative mean stereotype
scores (Ms ¼ 3.22–2.81) from pretest to posttest, F(1, 60) ¼ 4.16,
p < .05. There were no main effects for condition, F(2, 60) ¼ .53, p > .05
or for condition by time F(2, 60) ¼ .18, p > .05. The non-significant
interaction suggests that the change toward more negative stereo-
types at posttest was statistically the same for all three conditions.
To determine the locus of this effect, exploratory mixed factor
ANOVAs for each of the 30 individual stereotype items revealed a
significant time effect with a shift toward more negative ratings for
the following descriptors: ‘‘caring,’’ F(1, 60) ¼ 4.41, p < .05, ‘‘loving’’
F(1, 60) ¼ 11.25, p < .01, ‘‘fun’’ F(1, 60) ¼ 4.35, p < .05, ‘‘mean’’ F(1,
60) ¼ 7.28, p < .01. However, the amount of change from pre- to
posttest was statistically equal among the three groups for these
items, as indicated by the absence of significant interactions.
Scores for an idiographic stereotype measure were computed in the
same way as the stereotypic measure except that each participant’s
idiosyncratic items were averaged in with the 30 stereotypic items.
The two measures were highly correlated (r ¼.99) and produced

TABLE 2 Older People: Means and Standard Deviations for Attitude and
Stereotype Measures

Time Attitude Life-Satisfaction

Pretest 5.32 (0.68) 27.82 (3.37)

Posttest 6.00 (0.75) 29.00 (4.24)

Note. Standard deviations in parentheses. Higher means indicate the more positive
pole. Attitudes scores are the mean of five 7-point semantic differential items.
472 D. S. Meshel and R. P. McGlynn

essentially the same results. The combined 30-item stereotype

measure showed correlations of .59 at pretest and .67 at posttest with
the attitude measure, suggesting that the stereotype measure and the
belief elicitation procedure may not have captured the set of salient
beliefs that underlie global attitudes toward older people (Fishbein &
Ajzen, 1975).

OLDER PERSONS
The ratings from the five bipolar adjectives measuring older persons’
global attitudes toward younger persons were averaged in the same
way as the adolescent attitude measure. The Cronbach’s alpha coef-
ficient for the five-item scale was .79 on pretest and .77 on posttest.
Means and standard deviations for the attitude measure for the older
sample are reported in Table 2. The means (5.66 overall with a possible
range of one–seven) suggest that older persons had positive attitudes
toward younger persons. Older persons’ attitudes toward younger
people became significantly more positive from pretest to posttest,
t (16) ¼ 3.76, p < .01.
Means and standard deviations for the life satisfaction measure are
reported in Table 2. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the five-item
scale was .54 on pretest and .77 on posttest, so the five life satisfaction
statements were summed and the possible range of scores was 5–35.
Older persons’ life satisfaction became significantly more positive from
pretest to posttest, t (16) ¼ 2.16, p < .05.

DISCUSSION
The cross-generational attitudes of both adolescents and older parti-
cipants were shown to be somewhat positive in the absence of any
intervention. Further, as a result of intergenerational contact, the
attitudes of both groups showed signs of improvement, and the older
participants also showed increases in life satisfaction. Adolescent’s
stereotypes of older persons, however, became more negative after
contact. Below we discuss, in turn, the findings for the adolescent and
adult participants.

Adolescents
The present study helps to clarify the literature on the nature of
younger persons’ attitudes toward older people. The means for the
attitude measure for the entire adolescent sample were positive both
 Intergenerational Contact 473

at pretest and posttest. Thus, prior to any treatment, adolescents’

attitudes toward older people are slightly positive.
This finding is consistent with reviews of the attitude literature
(Crockett & Hummert, 1987; Kite & Johnson, 1988; Kogan, 1979).
Although several investigations (e.g., Hickey et al., 1968; Hummert,
1990; Tuckman & Lorge, 1953) found negative attitudes toward older
persons, such findings are due in part to the type of attitude instru-
ment and attributes of older persons being studied (Slotterback &
Saarnio, 1996). Findings also may differ due to the ‘‘transparency’’ of
the terminology used and the many different operationalizations of the
attitude construct (Crockett & Hummert, 1987). In short, the attitude
measures support the conclusion that adolescents’ attitudes toward
older people are not overwhelmingly negative, but are, in fact, slightly
positive.
The attitudes of participants in the contact group relative to con-
trols improved from pretest to posttest, although the absolute amount
of positive change was not significant. The finding that attitudes in the
present study were positive to begin with, along with evidence (dis-
cussed below) that some stereotypes became more negative following
contact, served to limit the amount of change. In this context, it is
quite possible that the moderately positive pretest attitudes produced
a ceiling effect. There was significant negative attitude change in the
untreated control group, but there were no noticeable events that
occurred during the course of the study that might explain this shift.
Nevertheless, taken as a whole, the attitude findings suggest that
carefully specified contact between young and old may promote posi-
tive attitude change in adolescents toward older people.
The finding of relatively more positive attitudes in adolescents
toward older people after increased contact is consistent with results
reported by a number of researchers (e.g., Aday et al., 1993, Couper
et al., 1991; Murphy-Russell et al., 1986), but inconsistent with
results reported by others (e.g., Baggett, 1981; Seefeldt, 1987;
Struntz & Reville, 1985). The discrepant findings appear to be due to
methodological and conceptual differences in the experiential inves-
tigations in terms of construct definition, quality and nature of
cross-age contact, population under investigation, and variations in
measures. Pettigrew and Tropp’s (2000) meta-analysis of the contact
hypothesis found that the effect size for contact with the elderly was
the smallest among the seven target groups that they investigated.
Data from the present study and the other two investigations that
designed intergenerational programs in accordance with the contact
hypothesis principles (Couper et al., 1991; McGowan & Blankenship,
1994) suggest that contact structured according to the contact
474 D. S. Meshel and R. P. McGlynn

hypothesis may be the critical factor in promoting positive attitudes

toward older people.
Because previous research showed that younger persons often
benefit in many ways from cross-age experiences, we investigated the
possibility that intergenerational contacts lead to increased life
satisfaction in the contact group relative to the didactic and control
groups. However, the results for the adolescent sample did not reveal
any significant effects on this measure. Pretest means were extremely
elevated and suggest a ceiling effect. The pretest means for all three
groups suggest that younger participants may have been trying to
present an extremely favorable representation of their overall life
satisfaction. The high pretest scores also may be due to testing ado-
lescents at the start of the school year when they were relaxed and not
engaged in significant amounts of schoolwork. The elevated life
satisfaction scores also may be due to the use of a version of the SWLS
(Diener et al., 1985) that had not been previously used on an adoles-
cent population. Finally, life satisfaction is a variable more distal to
the contact manipulation than attitude toward older persons and
should theoretically (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) show weaker effects.
Despite the negative shift in stereotypes across time, mean scores at
pretest and posttest were still clearly positive overall. While several
studies show that children hold negative stereotypes regarding older
people (e.g., Hickey et al., 1968; Jantz et al., 1976) there is no reason to
believe that the stereotypes held by children and adolescents are
substantially different from the mix of positive and negative stereo-
types held by college students and adults (Brewer & Lui, 1984;
Hummert, 1990; Schmidt & Boland, 1986).
The adolescents in the present study generated 124 usable beliefs
about older people in response to the belief-elicitation task. The
majority of these beliefs were negative. However, two-thirds of the
socially shared beliefs (stereotypes) were positive (e.g., kind, nice,
knowledgeable) while only 10 were neutral to negative (e.g., less
active, lonely, mean). In short, the negative items had low frequencies
(mode ¼ 1) and were generated by a smaller percentage of participants
while the majority of the most positive terms were agreed on by many
students (n ¼ 7–40). The findings suggest that when pressed to come
up with terms descriptive of older people, adolescents can generate
more negative than positive words. However, the items seen as most
typical of older people are predominantly positive items.
According to Giorgi (1985) stereotypes derived from a thought-
listing probe have the advantage of more closely reflecting adolescents’
beliefs regarding older people rather than the preconceived notions of
the researcher. Most previous stereotype measures have imposed
 Intergenerational Contact 475

meanings on participants a priori rather than letting them generate

and evaluate the stereotypical items themselves. The current method
more accurately captures the idiographic and phenomenological
nature of younger persons’ beliefs regarding older people. Interest-
ingly, adding idiosyncratic beliefs did not change the evaluative
implications of the overall set of beliefs regarding older persons. The
correlation between the stereotype and idiographic-stereotype mea-
sure was nearly perfect (.99) at pretest and posttest. The socially
shared stereotypes generated by this sample apparently captured the
meaning of the salient beliefs of most of the children.
Since a stereotype measure of this type can be seen as an alter-
native attitude measure (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), the correlation
between the overall evaluative stereotype measure and attitude
should have been higher than the moderate correlations at pretest
(.59) and at posttest (.67). It also should be expected that both
measures should change in the same direction. However, results
indicate that attitudes became relatively more positive in the contact
condition while the stereotypes became more negative across condi-
tions. According to Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), an attitude toward an
attitude object (e.g., older people) at any given moment is based on a
small set of salient beliefs. The 30 socially shared items that con-
stituted the stereotype measure may have included a substantial
number of beliefs that were non-salient for any given participant,
thus reducing the utility of the stereotype measure as an alternative
attitude measure. In addition, stereotypic beliefs generated at the
pretest may not have been as representative of salient beliefs at
posttest.
It was hypothesized that interaction that conformed to the contact
hypothesis principles and, perhaps, information presented to the
didactic group would increase the positive beliefs that adolescents had
of older people. However, from pretest to posttest overall stereotypes
became significantly more negative in all three conditions. As with the
negative shift in attitudes in the control group, no particular extra-
neous events that would explain this change seemed to take place
during the course of the study. Because the negative shift in overall
stereotypes was about the same in all three groups, it cannot be con-
cluded that contact was a cause of the more negative stereotypes.
However, despite being instructed otherwise, adolescents may have
shared their experiences with students from the other groups at dif-
ferent points in the study resulting in more homogenized stereotypes
than would have otherwise been the case.
The results from the older participants were perhaps the
most unexpected and were most strongly supportive of cross-age
476 D. S. Meshel and R. P. McGlynn

programming. The seniors showed more positive attitudes toward

adolescents from pretest to posttest. This finding is somewhat sur-
prising given that older persons’ attitudes toward younger people were
already positive as in previous research (Chapman & Neal, 1990;
Proller, 1989; Seefeldt et al., 1982) and that, in general, minority
targets show less change after contact than do majority targets (Pet-
tigrew & Tropp, 2000). Recently, Pinquart, Wenzel, and Soerensen
(2000) reported positive change in older adults’ attitudes toward par-
ticipating children following joint activities, but our older participants
also showed more positive attitudes toward children in general.
Another positive finding was that older people experienced an increase
in their life satisfaction from pretest to posttest. Increases in life
satisfaction after contact is consistent with the findings by Proller
(1989) and Seefeldt et al. (1982). Because a control group of older
persons was not available for this study, the attitude and life satis-
faction changes cannot be unequivocally attributed to the contact
manipulation, but the results are certainly encouraging.

CONCLUSION
Cross-age researchers have gradually called for more attention to the
principles of the contact hypothesis in designing and evaluating
intergenerational programs (e.g., Seefeldt, 1987). The present study
sought to meet each contact criterion in order to help promote more
positive attitudes and stereotypes. Analysis of older and younger
persons’ evaluations of the contact activities suggested that they felt of
equal status with their partner(s). In addition, participation was
voluntary and participants were aware that they could withdraw at
any time. In short, the conditions of the contact hypothesis seem to
have been met and may be responsible for cultivating an intimate,
non-competitive, and cooperative intergenerational context that
helped to facilitate positive changes in the attitudes of younger and
older persons from pre- to posttest.
The findings of the present investigation support the conclusion
that cross-age contact structured by the principles of the contact
hypothesis can help to promote more positive attitudes in adolescents
and older people. In addition, the adoption of the unidimensional
model of attitudes and the use of attitude and stereotype measures
that are theoretically consistent with theory brings some much needed
clarity to the intergenerational contact literature. As well, the model
suggests valid and reliable attitude measures that are easily con-
structed, understood, and administered.
 Intergenerational Contact 477

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