Stéphane P. Francioli

Stéphane P. Francioli and Michael S. North (2021), Youngism: the content, causes, and consequences of prejudices toward younger adults, Journal of Experimental Psychology General.

Abstract: Research on ageism has focused largely on perceptions of and biases targeting older adults, implicitly assuming that age-based stigma increases throughout the life span and that young adults benefit from favorable views relative to their older counterparts. In a series of eight studies (N = 2,323), we provide evidence to the contrary. We theorize that, in sharp contrast with ageism toward older adults, which revolves around fear and discomfort with the target’s later life stage, youngism (i.e., ageism toward young adults) is primarily generationally focused, aiming at contemporaneous generations of young adults rather than young adults in general. Consistent with this theorizing, we find that today’s young adults are ascribed a mixed stereotype content (Study 1a–1c), subject to harsher social judgments than both older age groups (Study 2) and recollections of former generations at the same age (Study 3a and 3b), and victim of discriminatory behaviors (Study 4 and 5). By comprehensively documenting cognitive, emotional, and behavioral evidence of youngism, the present work challenges the idea that ageism only reflects a plight of later-life aging. Instead, we show not only that ageism can target other age groups but also that the nature and content of ageism vary across the life span.

Stéphane P. Francioli and Michael S. North (2021), The older worker: gender and age discrimination in the workplace, Handbook of the Psychology of Aging.

Jonathan Lane, Samuel Ronfard, Stéphane P. Francioli, Paul Harris (2016), Children’s imagination and belief: prone to flights of fancy or grounded in reality?, Cognition, 152 (), pp. 127-140.

Abstract: Children ranging from 4 to 8 years (n = 39) reported whether they could imagine various improbable phenomena (e.g., a person making onion juice) as well as various impossible phenomena (e.g., a person turning an onion into a banana) and then described what they imagined. In their descriptions, children mentioned ordinary causes much more often than extraordinary causes. Descriptions of such ordinary causes were provided more often in relation to improbable (rather than impossible) phenomena. Following these imaginative efforts, children judged if each phenomenon could really happen. To check whether these reality judgments were affected by children’s attempts to imagine, a control group (n = 39) made identical reality judgments but were not first prompted to imagine each phenomenon. Children across the age range judged that impossible phenomena cannot really happen but, with increasing age, judged that improbable phenomena can happen. This pattern emerged in both the imagination and control groups; thus simply prompting children to imagine did not alter their reality judgments. However, within the imagination group, judgments that phenomena can really happen were associated with children’s claims to have successfully imagined the phenomena and with certain characteristics of their descriptions: imagining ordinary causes and imagining phenomena obtain. Results highlight close links between imagination and reality judgments in childhood. Contrary to the notion that young children have a rich imagination that readily defies reality, results indicate that their imagination is grounded in reality, as are their beliefs.

Stéphane P. Francioli, Felix Danbold, Michael S. North (Under Review), Intergroup Threat and Intergenerational conflict.

Stéphane P. Francioli, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Michael S. North (Working), Precocity threat: exposure to younger, more successful colleagues undermines job performance and career engagement.

Jean-Nicolas Reyt, Batia M. Wiesenfeld, Stéphane P. Francioli (Working), Seeing the forest and the trees: signals of construal level ambidexterity and venture funding success.