Do you watch honest-to-goodness age as a sign of wisdom and ranking computer memory ? Or is aging a beginning of decreased mental capacity and infirmity ? It turns out your answer might reckon on where you grow up .
In a recent study , research worker looked at perception of aging in three societies . They show photos of unseasoned and old people toTsimane ' Amazonian forager - farmers in Bolivia , and to peoplefrom the United States and Poland in lodge to determine whether so - scream “ traditional ” cultivation view maturate in a different light than industrialised lodge . They require questions like “ Whose sentiment is more respected ? ” And “ Who is more forgetful ? ”
They found that , overall , the Tsimane ' reckon ageing in a more positive luminosity . In peculiar , the Tsimane ' discover the elderly as having better computer memory than young people , whereas citizenry in the United States and Poland believe untried people had ranking memory . According to researcher Corinna Löckenhoff , this might be because in Tsimane ’ lodge , the elderly are viewed as repository of unwritten finish and knowledge : since traditional cognition is less probable to be write , the senior become a main source of information .
According to Futurity , anthropologists have long theorized that most traditional societies see aging in a more positive lighter than industrialized companionship . However , this is the first study to collect quantitative data on perceptions of age across cultures .
The researchers also found that all three societies believed old people were wise about “ life issues ” than the immature . While , in general , the Tsimane ’ reckon aging more positively , all three polish claimed the older were respected .
Löckenhoff hop the study will help armed combat stereotypes about ageing , which she argues can have a negatively charged impingement on the aged in industrialized societies : “ Older people could be doing better if they were not pulled down by stereotype threat , ” she distinguish Futurity .
[ h / t : Futurity ]
