“Let the strongest survive”: Ageism and social Darwinism as barriers to supporting policies to benefit older individuals

The World Health Organization (WHO) identified +65individuals as one of the most vulnerable populationsin the current pandemic. Previous research has showna robust association between ageism and derogatory atti-tudes and behaviors targeting older people. We proposedthat reluctance of people under age 65 to endorse the poli-cies that benefit older adults can be further explained bytheir adherence to social Darwinism. We tested a mediationmodel to examine whether social Darwinism would pre-dict support for policies directly and indirectly through theendorsement of ageist attitudes. We conducted two correla-tional studies in Turkey (Study 1; N = 1261) and the UnitedStates (Study 2; N = 210). In Study 1, we collected datathrough social media and messaging platforms in April2020. In Study 2, participants were recruited via ProlificAcademic in May 2020. In both studies, we found thatadherence to social Darwinist beliefs negatively predictedsupport for policies. We also found that this associationwas positively mediated by ageist attitudes. Overall, ourresearch contributes to the scholarly effort to identify thesocial-psychological barriers to public support for legal ini-tiatives aimed to secure a healthy and productive future forolder people