The debate around Trump's bruise shows how much we still fear getting old

26 February 2025, 15:13

The yellow-purple bruise on Trump’s hand has raised questions about the president’s health, his age and concern and worry about his competence.

These three perceptions are strongly associated in our minds, so when one is triggered, the others closely follow.

You can’t read a news article or social media posts about Trump’s bruised hand and not be reminded of his age.

The President’s age provides context to evaluate his health and competence, but we should be aware that the context provided by ‘age’ can be prone to bias and our own ageist attitudes.

This is because of widely held age-stereotypes, which are over-generalised beliefs about people based on age. Research has shown that beliefs about health and competence are central to the stereotypical beliefs we hold about younger, middle-aged and older people, and these underpin discriminatory behaviours people experience.

Many people have a negative view that health, cognitive capacity, and competence decline with age. These are the most common perceptions of ageing held in the UK and the reason many people fear getting older. 

Of course, while there are genuine age-related changes to physical and cognitive health, stereotypes that depict older people as lacking in competence and health overgeneralise, exaggerate changes and disregard individual differences.

These stereotypes are deeply ingrained in society and are held as mental representations which are closely connected in our minds. Even if we don’t personally endorse these views, just being aware they exist in society is enough for them to be associated concepts in our minds.

This means that when one is triggered, the associated concepts are triggered too. Like a triad, signs of health can infer age and competence, signs of ageing can infer health and competence, and evaluations of competence can infer age and health.

In contexts such as Trump’s bruise, when there is little information available, we rely on information, such as age, and associated stereotypes to explain or understand situations or behaviour.

Unusually, age is a special case because we can do this ourselves (we all have an age and belong to an age group) as well as to others! Just as we can interpret changes in our physical health as being due to our age or ageing, we can do so for others, including Trump.

The extent to which we do this can depend on our own views and perceptions about ageing, such as when we think old age begins, which is also dependent on our own age and increases as we age, and how negative people’s stereotypes are.

For instance, people who hold more negative attitudes to age are more likely to think that changes in health are due to older age. This is problematic because it can reinforce the negative stereotypes and associations between ageing, health and competence.

When it comes to Trump, his age could also be what makes the bruise newsworthy because health becomes more relevant and salient with age. However, we must still be aware that our evaluations might be subject to our own biases, which cannot disentangle health, ageing, and competence.

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Dr Hannah J Swift is a Reader in Social and Organisational psychology at the University of Kent.

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