An Intersectional Perspective on Age Stereotypes: Bisexual and Gay Men are Stereotyped as Younger than Heterosexual Men Even When Aging

ABSTRACT

We analyzed the age stereotypes of heterosexual, gay, and bisexual men and the implications of such stereotypes for the conceptualization of older gay and bisexual men, specifically. In Study 1a (N = 158) and 1b (N = 155), we found that compared to heterosexual men, participants stereotyped gay men more on young- than elderly-stereotypical traits. Participants represented bisexual men not as “somewhere in between” the stereotypes about heterosexual and gay men, but were characterized more by young- than elderly-stereotypical traits. In Study 2 (N = 106), we reasoned that because of their sexual orientation, both older gay and bisexual men would be viewed as atypical subtypes of older men, considered to be heterosexual by default. As atypical subtypes, both older gay and bisexual men may be stereotyped less on traits associated with elderly men and more on traits associated with their sexual orientation membership, namely young-stereotypical traits. Consistently, compared with older heterosexual men, both older gay and bisexual men were perceived as less typical of older men, and their perceived atypicality accounted for them being stereotyped less as older and more as younger men. The results have been examined for intersectional stereotyping research and practical implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Age categories
• gay ageism
• intersectionality
• sexual orientation categories
• stereotypes

Acknowledgments

The first study (Study 1a) of this article was pre-registered in the Open Science Framework (OSF; https://osf.io/6hsdn). We thank Karolyn Close for carefully proofreading a draft of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2024.2334777.

Open scholarship

Study 1a of this article was pre-registrered in the Open Science Framework (OSF; https://osf.io/6hsdn).

Data availability statement

Data files and analyses are available on the OSF website: https://osf.io/yjfmn/?view_only=eec09ac8525e4d5fa66ddaebb3b389e1

Notes

1. The pre-registered title of Study 1a was not consistent with the title of the present article as it did not include Study 2.

2. Application of the Bonferroni corrections generated by Jamovi resulted in different corrected levels of ps, but the pattern of results was the same as that reported in the main text of Study 2 (see Supplementary material).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.