This study aims to shed further light on the emergence of ageist attitudes by introducing a theoretically grounded mechanism that helps explain why older persons appear as burdensome by segments of society. We introduce the concept of “marketized mentality” (MM), which depicts a strong personal commitment to the principal values associated with the market economy, to the research on ageism. The results of multilevel regression analyses with World Values Survey data (N = 70,456 individuals in 59 nations) reveal that MM yields the hypothesized, positive relationship with our burden-focused indicator of ageism. Moreover, we observe that countries with high levels of MM—which might be conceptualized as “marketized anomic cultures”—exhibit particularly high levels of this form of ageism.

本研究旨在通过引入一个有理论基础的机制来进一步阐明年龄歧视态度的出现，该机制有助于解释为什么老年人在社会各阶层看来是负担。我们将“市场化心态”（MM）的概念描述了对与市场经济相关的主要价值观的强烈个人承诺，用于年龄歧视的研究。使用世界价值观调查数据（N  = 59 个国家的 70,456 人）进行的多级回归分析结果表明，MM 与我们以负担为中心的年龄歧视指标产生了假设的正相关关系。此外，我们观察到具有高水平 MM 的国家（可能被概念化为“市场化的异常文化”）表现出特别高的这种年龄歧视形式。