News stories about stupid young people make old people feel good

By Cory Doctorow at 3:56 pm Wednesday, Sep 1

Dr. Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick (Ohio State) and Matthias Hastall, (Zeppelin University, Germany) have published an article in the Journal of Communication with their research showing that old people love to read stories about young people doing stupid things because it makes them feel better about being old. The study was conducted using 178 German adults aged 18 to 30 and 98 between 55 and 60. I have no idea if this is a valid statistical sample, but since it confirms my own feelings about old people, I will trust its results.

All the adults in the study were shown what they were led to believe was a test version of a new online news magazine. They were also given a limited time to look over either a negative and positive version of 10 pre-selected articles.

Each story was also paired with a photograph depicting someone of either the younger or the older age group.

The researchers found that older people were more likely to choose to read negative articles about those younger than themselves. They also tended to show less interest in articles about older people, whether negative or positive.

But younger people preferred to read positive articles about other young people.

Older people enjoy reading negative stories about young (via /.)