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Patronizing Speech to Older Adults

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Abstract

We measured the use of patronizing speech among young adults who were instructed to provide directions (via an internet connection) to a newcomer to campus described as 21 or 65 years old. As predicted, the acoustic properties used with older adults were moderated by the speakers’ history with older unrelated adults (no comparable effects were found for speakers’ history with grandparents). Participants with relatively low contact with unrelated older adults were more likely than those with high contact to be judged as sounding “patronizing” and to display acoustical properties associated with patronization (high vocal intensity, high pitch) with older newcomers. However, participants showed a shared tendency to speak more slowly to older than young adults. Findings inform our understanding of the circumstances under which ageist speech is amplified or attenuated.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS-0739862) awarded to the third author. We would like to express our appreciation to the many undergraduate research assistants (Cassie Somoano, Juli White, Alex Da Costa Ferro, Alex Barnes, Alex Johnson, Jacqueline Tolson, Iulia Mihala, and Andrea Econome) who conducted the acoustical analyses described here.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Redlands, Redlands, CA, USA

    Jessica A. Hehman

  2. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA

    Randy Corpuz & Daphne Bugental

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  1. Jessica A. Hehman
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  2. Randy Corpuz
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  3. Daphne Bugental
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Correspondence to Daphne Bugental.

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Hehman, J.A., Corpuz, R. & Bugental, D. Patronizing Speech to Older Adults. J Nonverbal Behav 36, 249–261 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-012-0135-8

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