Older people have experiences with learning and ideas about their own self-efficacy, and more or less positive attitudes towards learning new things, as well as ideas about how difficult it would be to learn a given new technology. In the first case study it was seen that sometimes these perceptions and attitudes are derived from (good or bad) experiences at work. Also the social environment may influence how people see themselves with regard to their learning abilities. For example, the idea that people are too old to learn may come from an individual him/herself, but also from the environment. If the self-perception is too negative, people will not start with the learning process, but reject the technology as being too difficult for them. If the ‘‘learning pain’’ is not perceived as too big, people will have an intention to learn to use it (given that they see the technology as useful and the facilitating conditions are right). The social environment plays an important
role in encouraging (or discouraging) this intention.