What has it felt like to consider your own stereotyping views of people

There is ample evidence to suggest that negative expectations and stereotypes about the competence of older adults pervade Western culture (e.g., Hummert, 1999; Kite and Wagner, 2002). For example, older adults are characterized as more forgetful and less able to learn new information (e.g., Hummert, Garstka, Shaner, and Strahm, 1994). In addition, young and old people alike believe that there is general memory decline across the latter half of the life span (Lineweaver and Hertzog, 1998; Ryan, 1992; Ryan and Kwong See, 1993). Research corroborates these views: there is abundant evidence that older adults do perform more poorly than younger adults across a wide variety of cognitive tasks (for a review, see Zacks, Hasher, and Li, 2000).

Yet there is also evidence of older adults serving important roles in society. For example, nearly 40 percent of the nation's 1,200 working federal judges have reached senior status and could retire. But, these senior judges are crucial to the justice system and, handling reduced caseloads, carry out nearly 20 percent of the federal judiciary's work (Markon, 2001). This fact is also consistent with the literature on cognitive aging, which shows that reasoning about complex matters relevant to daily life—what some call wisdom–shows no deterioration with age (Baltes and Kunzmann, 2003). Yet pervasive beliefs about age-related decline tend to outweigh beliefs about positive aging in our culture. Most people expect that losses will outnumber gains as they get older (Heckhausen, Dixon, and Baltes, 1989); most people expect their abilities to decline with age (Staudinger, Bluck, and Herzberg, 2003).

1960: wilma rudolph was the first woman to win three olympic gold medals in track and field at one olympic games. she was an american sprinter from tennessee, she was acclaimed the fastest woman in the world. she was among the most visible black women in america and abroad. she became a role model for black and female athletes. she was also known as a civil rights and women right's pioneer.

1973: billy jean king is an american former number one tennis player. she represented the united states in the federal cup and the wightman cup. for three years she was the usa's captain in the federation cup. she defends gender equality and has been a pioneer for equal and social justice. at the age of 29, she won "the battle of sexes" tennis match against the 55 year old bobby riggs. she was also the founder of women's tennis association and the women's sports foundation.  

1983: tamara mckinney becomes the first american female skier to win the alpine world cup overall championship top. she was the only american to hold that title for a quarter century until 2008.

1992: manon rhéaume, from canada,   becomes the only woman to start in a national hockey league game in an exhibition game for the tampa bay lightning . she played on the canada women's national ice hockey team winning gold medals in 1992 and 1994. and silver medals in 1998. manon marked the first time a woman appeared in a regular season professional game with her first appearance against the salt lake golden eagles.

2013: serena williams won 78 of 82 matches at the age of 31. she is an american professional tennis player. she reached the number 1 ranking for the first time on july, 8, 2002. at the age of 16, she played against karsten braasch the battle of sexes. she was the highest paid female athlete in 2016. she is a unicef ambassador .