The age of misinformation: Older people exhibit greater partisan bias in sharing and evaluating (mis)information accuracy

Older adults are known to share more political misinformation than younger adults, but the nature of this tendency remains unclear. Using signal detection theory, this research examines two explanations for older adults’ greater political misinformation sharing: (a) Age reduces people’s ability to discriminate true from false information, leading older people to share more misinformation, and (b) older people exhibit stronger partisan sharing, preferring to share information that is congruent with their political ingroup rather than the outgroup. Two exploratory studies around the 2022 presidential elections in Brazil and midterm elections in the United States (NBrazil = 697; NU.S. = 1,716) support the partisan congruence explanation. Age does not robustly predict discernment between true versus false information in sharing intentions or accuracy judgments. Instead, age predicts partisan biases in sharing political news and judging its accuracy, and these effects remain after controlling for income and education. The effects of age in predicting partisan information sharing are not statistically mediated by measures of cognitive reflection, need for cognition, or faith in intuition. These results suggest that older adults engage in more partisan information assessment and sharing behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)