Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

A total of 1136 college students (357 Japanese, 434 Chinese, and 345 American) filled out a questionnaire that included an IC scale (Cultural Orientation Scale), Kogan’s attitudes toward old people scale, and a modified aging anxiety scale, in addition to demographic information. Cronbach’s alphas indicated satisfactory reliability on all three scales for the three cultural groups. The results indicate that overall, the three groups scored higher on collectivism than individualism, suggesting a more collectivistic cultural orientation for all three groups. However, the Chinese and Japanese students were more likely to accept hierarchy and inequality than the American students. Findings also show that the American and Japanese participants held significantly more positive attitudes toward aging and were less anxious about aging than their Chinese counterparts. For all three groups, collectivistic cultural orientation is found to be positively correlated to attitudes toward aging and negatively related to anxiety level. These findings will be discussed in the context of culture, globalization, and the evolving nature of both Western and Eastern traditional values.