DOES AGING AFFECT THE USE OF SHIFTING STANDARDS? Carolyn Hoessler Alison L. Chasteen Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Prior research on the use of stereotypes in social judgments has shown that whether young adults make stereotype-consistent or -inconsistent judgments depends in part upon the response scale that is used. This shifting standards effect in stereotype use was examined in the present study to determine whether older adults, who tend to rely on stereotypes more than younger adults, would also show a similar effect. Young and older adults evaluated the height of male and female targets using either an objective or subjective scale. No age differences were found, with both age groups producing stereotype-consistent judgments (i.e., men are taller than women) on an objective scale, but stereotype-inconsistent judgments (i.e., men and women are equally tall) on a subjective scale. These results suggest that the shifting standards effect holds across the adult life span. Research on person perception and stereotyping has revealed a great deal about when people are likely to rely on stereotypes during impression formation and when they are not (e.g., Devine, 1989; Gilbert & Hixon, 1991; Lepore & Brown, 1997; Pendry & Macrae, 1994). Yet, most of this work has been conducted with young adult perceivers, and much less is known about person perception in older adults (but see Hess, 1999; Hess, Rosenberg, & Waters, 2001). Received 17 May 2006; accepted 19 July 2006. This study was conducted as part of Carolyn Hoessler’s honors thesis and was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada awarded to Alison Chasteen. The authors thank Monica Biernat for supplying the target photographs and Dominic Packer and Sonia Kang for comments on an earlier draft of this article. Address correspondence to Alison Chasteen, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada. E-mail: chasteen@psych. utoronto.ca Experimental Aging Research, 34: 1–12, 2008 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0361-073X print/1096-4657 online DOI: 10.1080/03610730701525428