TABLE 1.

Examples of application of the Temporally Integrated Model of Intergroup Contact and Threat (TIMICAT), applied to intergenerational relations

Temporal context		Threat
		No threat (baseline)	Past threat	Discrete single threat	Continuous threat	Multiple threat	Future threat
		Examples	‘Traditional’ roles of younger and older people frame expectations and opportunities.	Election of new government that significantly prioritizes an older (younger) demographic.	Age‐related differences in spreading and suffering from disease, growing awareness of health, and economic interdependencies.	Intergenerational divides made more salient as traditional industries and jobs being replaced, older generation culture challenged by new demographics of neighborhood. Fear of crime, property hoarding.	Expectation of increased intergenerational competition in the context of modernizing economies that require greater individual adaptability.
Contact	No or very low contact (rare)	Older people living in a retirement village rarely visited by anyone aged under 50.	Acceptance of traditional roles persists.	Attitudes undergo temporary shift in response to threat.	Intergenerational fear, distrust, antipathy grow.	Underpins more entrenched intergenerational division, harder to shift because of multiple components.	Inhibits contact and initiates intergenerational suspicion and anxiety.
	Past contact	Growing up living with parents/older generations into one's early adulthood.	Content of past contact may reinforce or may weaken acceptance of traditional roles.	Contact inhibits attitude shift but only if relevant to the particular domain of the threat.	Contact militates against fear in relevant past threat domains, not necessarily in new contemporary ones.	Contact may attenuate impact of threat but not prevent variation in threat from affecting attitudes.	Contact may make people more open to supporting alternative futures that mitigate potential threats (e.g., voting for policy change).
	Discrete contact	An inspiring retired professor holds one meeting with a class of freshman students.	Contact may be viewed as an exception to the rule, prior threat perceptions may prevail.	Both the threat and contact are regarded as exceptions, neither has a sustained effect on the other or on attitudes.	Contact has little effect on threat, intergenerational attitudes become more negative over time.	Contact has no effect on threat which consolidates more negative intergenerational attitudes.	Contact offers a positive exemplar but not sufficiently generalizable to prevent intergenerational anxiety.
	Continuous contact	Living in a harmonious multigenerational household or working in an age diverse organisation.	Contact experiences prevail over sense of past threat.	Temporary disruption of cordial contact but not of more enduring intergenerational attitudes.	Contact offers opportunity to address threat, potentially supporting constructive attitudes and policy preferences.	Substantial structural changes underlying threats may impede or break sustained contact, with potential to fuel intergenerational division.	Contact motivates intergenerational planning to mitigate the threat together.
	Multiple contact	Participation in multi‐event intergenerational contact programs. A mature or retired student attending weekly lectures in an undergraduate program.	Contact predominates in shaping attitudes.	Threat event is discussed or provides focus for intergenerational interaction, may facilitate empathy but may also temporarily worsen contact quality or frequency.	Contact allows repeated ‘tests’ of implications of the threat, enabling its consensual management in day‐to‐day interactions, but threat persistence gradually reduces levels of contact and worsens intergenerational relations.	Multiplicity of both contact and threat exposes domain specific manifestations of the threats. This creates a basis for contention and possible consensual change. Intergenerational relations become intensified either in consensual or conflictual directions, or sometimes both. Forms and spheres of contact change in response.	Contact motivates intergenerational planning to mitigate the threat together but opportunities are limited by discontinuities in intergenerational relationships.
	Future contact	Expecting to join an age‐diverse company, household, or neighborhood	Threat inhibits willingness for contact or leads to stereotype fulfilling behavior during contact.	Whilst still salient, threat adversely affects expectations for future contact, particularly in the specific threat domain.	Threat inhibits contact, but primarily within the specific threat domain.	Threat inhibits contact more generally through its impact on intergenerational anxiety. Intergenerational antipathy deepens.	To the extent that anticipated interaction is also threatening it inhibits actual contact and reinforces negative intergenerational attitudes.