Abstract
Age-gap couples often elicit negative stereotypes and prejudice. According to social exchange and equity theories, we predicted that prejudice towards age-gap couples may stem from perceived relational inequity. We hypothesized that age-gap, as compared to age-matched, couples were perceived as less equitable and, as a result, less liked. To test these hypotheses, people evaluated, and inferred the equity of, age-gap and age-matched relationships. We found that age-gap, as compared to age-matched, couples were more disliked and perceived as less equitable. Within age-gap relationships, older men and women were perceived as reaping greater rewards than their younger partners. Importantly, perceived inequity predicted prejudice towards age-gap, but not age-matched, couples. In exploratory analyses, age-gap couples consistently elicited significantly more prejudice than other types of couples. Implications for age-gap relationships and future research are discussed.
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Notes
It is important to note that participants’ prejudice was directed towards the couple, rather than the man or woman specifically. Therefore, the interaction results listed previously could also be written with a focus on women (e.g., “people expressed greater prejudice towards older women’s relationships when they partner with younger, rather than older, men.”)
This interaction could also be written with a focus on women (e.g., “people perceived greater inequity within younger, rather than older, women’s relationships when they partnered with an older man. Such that younger women were perceived to benefit less than older women when they partnered with an older man.”)
For this direct test of our hypothesis, we needed to create a combined perceived inequity for age-gap couples (i.e., older man/younger woman, younger man/older woman) and age-matched couples (i.e., young man/young woman, old man/old woman), respectively. Because the inequity variable was scored from 1 (He’s getting a better deal) to 7 (She’s getting a better deal), we could not simply average these variables together because any perceived inequity among age-gap couples (older man/younger woman, younger man/older woman) would not be captured by an average score. That is, if someone perceived a great deal of inequity among the age-gap older man relationship (score of 1 - He’s getting a much better deal) and age-gap younger man relationship (score of 7 – She’s getting a much better deal), the average (7 + 1)/2 would incorrectly reveal 4 (They’re each getting the same equal deal). Therefore, we needed to take the absolute value of each score from the midpoint of 4 before averaging the scores.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge and greatly appreciate the contributions of my research team: Juliana D’Aoust, Camille Brandon, Angele Doakes, Gabriel Lee, Marlene Martinez, and Crystal Saludes.
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All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Collisson, B., De Leon, L.P. Perceived inequity predicts prejudice towards age-gap relationships. Curr Psychol 39, 2108–2115 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9895-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9895-6