Modeling the Role of AI Bias on Aging Anxiety: A Mediation Analysis

The present study investigates how experienced ageism mediates the relationship between perceived ageism from GenAI and age anxiety outcomes with a secondary data analysis from the Older Adult Annotator Demographic and Attitudinal Survey (N = 1,483). Measures consist of older adult (age range: 50–90) responses to the previously validated Aging Anxiety Scale (AAS) and the unvalidated Age Experience Survey (AES). An exploratory factor analysis followed by a confirmatory factor analysis establishes latent variables from both surveys. A structural mediation model was used to assess whether Experienced Ageism (AES) mediated the relationship between attitudes towards algorithmic ageism (AES) and age anxiety outcomes (AAS). Experienced ageism mediated the relationship between attitudes toward algorithmic ageism and implicit age anxieties ( p s < .05) but not explicit age anxieties. Future work should explore how perceived ageism in GenAI influences age anxiety and adoption of GenAI technology among older adults.