PhD Welcome Day 2021/22

Program

10:00 - Introduction by prof. Maria Paola Paladino, Coordinator of the Doctoral Course in Cognitive Science

10:15 - Lecture by Prof. Andrea Carnaghi (University of Trieste)
            A socio-cognitive look at the intersectionality: the case of age and sexuality category intersection

11:45 - Research speed dating among the PhD students

Abstract

Old gay men face unique forms of discrimination that could not be conceived of as the additive result of being gay and old. At the societal level of analyses, old gay men appear to be overlooked as gay, who are represented as young by default, and as old men, who are represented as heterosexual by default. In this research program, we analyze such category defaults at the individual cognition level. We first reviewed the most prominent theories that can account for the conflation of the category ‘gay men’ with ‘young men’, and the category ‘elderly men’ with ‘heterosexual men’. Then, we presented six studies suggesting that both ‘gay men’ (but not ‘heterosexual men’) and ‘elderly men’ (but not ‘young men) have a graded category structure, which respectively favors young gay men and elderly heterosexual men as more typical category exemplars. Finally, in four studies we showed that since the category combination of ‘gay men’ and ‘elderly men’ was processed as an atypical case, elderly gay men are perceived as younger and less old than elderly heterosexual men.