Listen to the interview here.
There's a video going viral on the internet about a young man filming himself staging what looks like a random act of kindness, giving a bunch of flowers to an elderly woman sitting on her own in a food court in Melbourne.
It looks beautiful, even moving but the woman who received the flowers didn't see it that way. She felt the video was artificially staged and it left her feeling dehumanised. She felt stereotyped as old and lonely.
So was a random act of kindness misinterpreted or was it an example of something that's known as benevolent ageism?
Professor Nancy Pachana is a clinical geropsychologist and neuropsychologist, she's the Director of the University of Queensland's Healthy Ageing Initiative and her book is called Ageing: A Very Short Introduction. Nancy is chatting with ABC Radio Brisbane's Joel Spreadborough.
