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Purpose Developing interventions that target population-specific motivational barriers to promote health behaviours is crucial, especially for older adults who are confronted with negative age stereotypes. This systematic review evaluates randomized and non-randomized field studies that tested the effects of age stereotype-based interventions on health outcomes in adults aged 50 years and over. Methods MEDLINE, SPORTDiscus, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection and PsychINFO were searched to identify articles published up until May 2019. Data were extracted from all articles independently and assessed for risk-of-bias using Cochrane Collaboration tools. Results Ten articles met the inclusion criteria. Health-related outcome measures were identified across three domains: physical, psychological/psychosocial well-being, and quality of life/subjective health, with age stereotypes reported as an additional outcome. Intervention structure varied substantially between studies regarding content, duration, frequency, and length of follow-up. Conclusions Most studies showed that age stereotype-based interventions significantly improved physical function or physical activity as well as self-perceptions of ageing. However, more rigorous studies are needed. Indeed, given the detrimental health effects of age stereotypes, the potential for impact of interventions designed to challenge them is important. Future research should explore the implications of intervening on different stereotype mechanisms, whether intervention effects are comparable across health domains, and whether age stereotype-based interventions are more effective than non-age-specific interventions. PROSPERO Registration CRD42018094006.

This study examined whether stereotype-inconsistent information interacts with implicit theories of ability to affect handgrip strength in older adults. Eighty-two retired older adults (13 men and 69 women) from 61 to 89 years old (Mage = 75.8 years; SD = 6.9) performed maximum voluntary contractions (MVC) during a handgrip task in a design manipulating implicit theories of ability and stereotype-inconsistent information related to physical decline with aging. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: incremental condition, entity condition, or control group. The results showed that in the incremental condition the stereotype-inconsistent information improved the peak MVC, the average MVC, the peak rate of force development (RFD), and RFD in the initial 50 ms of the MVC. This study therefore demonstrated that individuals with an incremental mindset who are exposed to stereotype-inconsistent information can boost their physical performance. These findings are discussed from the perspective of regulatory fit (i.e., when task framing is congruent with the individual's goal).

The aim of the current research was to investigate the relative age effect as a factor of basketball dropout. In order to do so, we examined the distribution of birth dates of young male (n = 44,498) and female (n = 30,147) French basketball players who have dropped out this sport during or at the end of the 2005-2006 season. Chi-square analyses showed an underrepresentation of dropouts among male players born early in the competition year and an overrepresentation among those born late in the ‘9-10 years old', ‘11-12 years old' and ‘13-14 years old' categories and in the first year of the ‘15-17 years old' category. Concerning girls, this asymmetry was observed across the same age categories. For both boys and girls, there was no biased distribution in the ‘7-8 years old' category. Findings of the present study confirm that the relative age effect should be taken into consideration in studies about sport dropout as a variable that may influence significantly this phenomenon.

This research investigated different forms of sex bias in teacher expectations relative to gymnastics performance. First, a laboratory experiment including 163 physical education teachers confirmed that stereotypes favorable to boys may influence teacher expectations in gymnastics. Next, a naturalistic study involving 15 teachers and 422 students showed that teachers expected no sex differences even though girls performed higher than boys. However, this sex bias was due to the reliance on non-diagnostic student personal characteristics favorable to boys rather than on a stereotype per se. These results suggest that egalitarian beliefs may mask a bias in favor of a social group when group differences do really exist, and that sex-biased teacher expectations do not inevitably involve an influence of sex stereotypes.