As we move closer to Election Day 2026, voting preferences are moving back into focus—and with them, analyses of what drives partisanship at the polls. However, less frequently asked is when Americans show evidence of partisan behavior: shortly or well after reaching the legal voting age? As teenagers? In elementary school?

A team of psychology researchers has found evidence of partisan behavior in children ages 5 to 9—they frequently endorsed their own group’s claims even when evidence suggested otherwise, indicating group affiliation influenced their responses. However, the scientists also uncovered a potential remedy to such responses: When incentivized to tell the truth about what they had seen or when they could provide answers under the veil of privacy, the children were much less likely to adopt their own group’s claims. The paper is published in the journal Cognition.

“Even young children will side with their group over the evidence of their own eyes, but mainly when they’re responding publicly and when being accurate doesn’t count for much,” explains Andrei Cimpian, a psychology professor at New York University and the senior author of the paper. “However, if you allow them to respond in private or give them a reason to care about accuracy, the partisanship effect disappears.”