Disociación entre atribución de discapacidad explícita e implícita hacia adultos mayores en estudiantes de psicología

negative attributions toward elders are a paramount feature creating an unfavorable trait which manifests itself as stereotypes and discriminatory behaviors. this turns to be more critical when those misattributions are covertly distributed in the general population. negative attributions toward elders are greater than younger when comparing both groups, and are dependent on several factors such as amount of information provided, coherence of the data, age and even the year when the search was carried on, as recent studies show less differences between elders and young attributions compared with older ones, particularly on explicit measures. probably this reflects the more acceptability and tolerance exhibited by new cohorts toward different social groups in such areas as ethnics, religion or sexuality. it is obvious that elders stereotypes must be explored using not only explicit but also implicit measures, which reveal more clearly automatic associations and attributions toward key social groups. as there are sound differences between both kinds of assessments, combination is highly recommended. there are few studies that have accomplished the investigation of disability attribution toward elders by young subjects in the field of education using implicit association tests (iat). this may prove useful as ageism exists in the psychology career programs, being studies about elders under-represented in the programs contents. objectives: to evaluate whether dissociation between implicit and explicit disability attribution measures exists in a cohort of young university psychology students. methods and instruments: 210 subjects were included in the study (121 female and 89 men), who were recruited from students attending regular courses at the faculty of psychology on the city of rosario (argentina), aged from 24 to 29-year-old. implicit attributions were assessed with the iat that measures automatic association's strength between two core concepts (in the present study