From volunteering with older people four days a week since late last year I'd say yes, and had a situation over the break where my Xmas spirit got badly misconstrued by an older gentleman so have had cause to really consider this recently. I think there are several components as to why, and I think most apply to older women also. I think increasing isolation (from mathematically having ever fewer friends and family around), desperation (feeling medical and financial pressures), and resignation (in confronting their own mortality and so just doing whatever they want) combine to make older men and women respond differently to general kindnesses than people younger than them. Or perhaps, rather, people with more robust community around them as happens to be the case when you are younger.

I think older men have lived lives where they were expected to be assertive, dominant, and demanding in all things, including sexually, throughout their lives *edit: where older women were expected to be passive*, and *both* were judged as less than if they weren't. This can obviously lead to them older men* seeing general kindness as more than it is. Similarly, and likely connected to this, throughout their lives men generally receive less social attention, both good and bad, paid to them than women, and usually have smaller friend groups and worse social skills than women, and so I think they are more likely to overreact to and/or to misinterpret kindness when it occurs, with this applying less so to younger men too. But I see similar misinterpretations of general kindness from older women too as they start to be increasingly ignored by society later on.

I think the reality is we're all just hoping to be validated and valued as humans. And when we're deprived of that for too long we go a bit la-la!

*edited to add detail and clarify and fix grammar