The youth has gone wrong today…
Older people are interested in the negative about youthABC Magazine
Young people are quite confident in themselves, and older people have to look for negative news about the younger generation to raise their self-esteem, scientists say.
American scientists from Ohio State University together with German researchers from Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen invited 178 young people aged 18 to 30 years and 98 senior citizens aged 50-65 years to participate in the experiment.
All of them were asked to read a previously unpublished issue of an online magazine containing 10 carefully selected stories about young and elderly people in two versions: in a negative and positive way. Each subject had the opportunity to get acquainted with only one of the two versions. At the same time, the participants were not allowed to fully read the contents of the articles, but were asked to choose the ones that would seem most interesting to them.
It turned out that the elderly participants of the experiment mostly chose negative articles about young people, not showing much interest in articles about people from their age group. And young people, on the contrary, were practically not interested in the life of the older generation, regardless of the emotional orientation of the articles. Young people were more likely to choose positive articles about their successful peers.
The survey conducted at the end of the experiment allowed scientists to draw the following conclusions. Feelings of self-esteem and social self-identification among young people are quite strong and do not need additional support from the media. But older citizens need to regularly receive negative information about young people in order to increase their self-esteem and maintain a sense of self-worth, the lack of which they begin to experience as they age.
"Thus," concludes the head of the study (Journal of Communication, Please Your Self: Social Identity Effects on Selective Exposure to News About In- and Out-Groups), Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, "people use the media to increase their social identity. At the same time, young people and senior citizens pursue different goals with the help of mass media, which is reflected in their choice of articles of different orientation."
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru01.09.2010