The Relationship between Political Ideology and the Pursuit of Staying Forever Young
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The Relationship between Political Ideology and the Pursuit of Staying Forever Young Ga-Eun (Grace) Oh 1 Received: 29 May 2019 / Accepted: 1 September 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract In an era defined by an aging population, the desire to look younger is so great, that the anti-aging industry is expected to grow by hundreds of billions of dollars within only a few years’ time. This research aims to investigate how the increasing interest to look younger is related to political ideology. We propose that accepting the ideal beauty of youthful bodies and pursuing physical youthfulness would be more prevalent among conservatives. We build this upon previous research showing that political conservatism is related to the acceptance of norms and values, as well as having strict boundaries for social perceptions and sensitivity to threat and losses. We conducted a pilot study which revealed that the queries related to anti-aging were more popular in states where political conservatism was higher in the US. Moreover, a survey among American participants revealed that conservatives tended to show a greater interest in preserving their youthfulness, and that they had more resistant attitudes toward aging. Moreover, they exhibited higher preferences for anti-aging benefits, compared to liberals and moderates. These findings contribute to extant literature on political psychology, body ideal, and ageism by demonstrating the relationship between political ideology and the pursuit of youthfulness, which is a neglected but critical dimension of the beauty ideal. Keywords Youthfulness . Anti-aging . Cosmetics . Political ideology . Conservatism
Introduction There is a universal favoritism for youthfulness (Westerhof and Barrett 2005) as well as an increasingly negative stereotype toward older persons (Ng et al. 2015). The preference of the young to the old is so profound that, according to
* Ga-Eun (Grace) Oh [email protected]
1
Institute of International Business and Governance, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, Open University of Hong Kong, 30 Good Shepherd St., Ho Man Tin, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
G. E. G. Oh
analysis results based on over 2 million completed implicit association tests, 80% of participants exhibit a strong implicit favoritism toward young people across various demographic differences such as age, gender, ethnicity, and political orientation (Nosek et al. 2007). Particularly, favoritism towards a youthful appearance is universal in that people across different cultures show a preference towards a younger female facial appearance with neonate features (e.g., large eyes; a small nose; smooth skin) (Cunningham et al. 1995). By contrast, as aging-related losses (e.g., losing productivity and independence) become more and more aversive (Angus and Reeve 2006), getting older becomes associated with a declining social status (Calasanti 2007; Macnicol 2010). That explains why a great number of people are highly interested in preserving their youthfulness and living more youthful lives.
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