Female aging, compared to male aging, is associated with a greater decline in status and attractiveness. To investigate whether sex differences in the perception of aging function at both the cognitive and affective levels, 76 college students (38 male, 38 female), with a mean age of 22.8, viewed slides of a male and female adult. Subjects were given a brief sketch of each stimulus person, labelled as either middle-aged or elderly. They then assigned chronological age estimations to each slide, and rated each on bipolar traits according to a 7-point scale. An analysis of the results showed that the college age males' judgments of age, more than those of females, were influenced by age labels. When given extrinsic age categorizations, males tended to override facial cues as a guide to a person's chronological age. However, the greater sensitivity of males to the age dimension did not imply the presence of age stereotyping. Male and female subjects did not differ in their attribution of personality traits to presumed ages. (BL)