Youngism: The content, causes, and consequences of prejudices toward younger adults.

Consistent with this theorizing, we find that today's young adults are ascribed a mixed stereotype content (Study 1a-1c), subject to harsher social judgments than both older age groups (Study 2) and recollections of former generations at the same age (Study 3a and 3b), and victim of discriminatory behaviors (Study 4 and 5). By comprehensively documenting cognitive, emotional, and behavioral evidence of youngism, the present work challenges the idea that ageism only reflects a plight of later-life aging. Instead, we show not only that ageism can target other age groups but also that the nature and content of ageism vary across the life span. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).