Partisan Views, Not Age-Related Gullibility, Drive Older Adults to Share Misinformation

Adults aged 55 and older share significantly more political misinformation on social media than younger users, but not because they lack the ability to distinguish fact from fiction, according to groundbreaking research from the University of Colorado Boulder.

The comprehensive study, which examined nearly 2,500 adults across the United States and Brazil, revealed that increasing age correlates with stronger partisan beliefs—and this heightened partisanship appears to cloud judgment when evaluating news content.

“We found that older people are more likely to believe as true and to share information that aligns with their party, whether that information is true or not,” explained Leaf Van Boven, professor in CU Boulder’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and the study’s senior author.

Published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General on November 3, the research challenges previous assumptions about why older adults disproportionately spread false information online.

The phenomenon of older adults sharing misinformation has been well-documented in previous research. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Facebook users over 65 shared almost seven times more fake news than adults under 30. On Twitter, users over 50 accounted for 80% of fake news sharing.

Until now, competing theories have attempted to explain this behavior. Some researchers pointed to age-related cognitive decline, suggesting that older adults might be more vulnerable to deception. Others proposed that seniors struggle to identify the origins of information or fail to distinguish between advertisements and objective news. Conversely, a recent meta-analysis of 31 studies concluded that older adults are actually better than younger people at identifying fake news.

To resolve these contradictions, Van Boven collaborated with Guilherme Ramos, now an assistant professor of marketing at the Rochester Institute of Technology, who was visiting CU as a PhD student from the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration in Rio de Janeiro.

The timing of their research coincided with significant political events in both countries—the 2022 U.S. midterm elections and the controversial presidential runoff between Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil—creating an ideal environment to study misinformation dynamics.

Participants viewed political news headlines relevant to their respective countries. Some headlines presented Republican or conservative viewpoints favorably, while others favored Democratic or liberal perspectives. Unknown to participants, some headlines had been identified as false by fact-checking organizations.

For example, one widely circulated false pro-Republican headline stated: “Pope Frances shocks world and endorses Donald Trump for President.” A similarly false pro-liberal headline in Brazil claimed: “Bolsonaro wants to cut 25% of civil servants’ salaries.”

The researchers asked participants about their likelihood of sharing these news items on social media and, in follow-up experiments, whether they believed the claims to be true or false. The study also assessed participants’ political ideologies and analytical thinking abilities.

Contrary to expectations, the study found no evidence that older adults have diminished analytical thinking capabilities or are less able to distinguish between real and fake news. Instead, researchers discovered that adults over 55 demonstrated significantly stronger partisan leanings, which substantially affected how they evaluated information.

“They had different standards of evaluating evidence depending on whether it reflected well on their side or not,” Van Boven noted. The research suggests that older adults apply more skepticism to news that reflects poorly on their preferred candidate or party, while readily accepting and sharing information that supports their political views.

This pattern intensifies with age and was consistent across political affiliations in both countries, despite Brazil having approximately 30 political parties compared to America’s two dominant parties.

“This suggests that the two-party system is not necessarily the issue here,” Ramos observed. “People in Brazil behave in the same partisan way.”

The findings indicate that efforts to combat misinformation should focus not only on helping people identify false information but also on encouraging less partisan behavior in social media communications. Van Boven recommends that individuals critically examine their posting habits and consider how their political leanings might influence how they evaluate news.

Ramos further suggests maintaining diverse social connections. “As someone who studies political polarization, I am very much in favor of inter-group contact. It’s critical for a healthy democracy that we can talk to and have friends who think differently.”

As polarization continues to shape political discourse worldwide, this research provides valuable insights into the mechanisms driving misinformation spread among different age groups, highlighting the need for approaches that address partisan bias rather than simply focusing on information literacy.