Persuasion at Play: Understanding Misinformation Dynamics in Demographic-Aware Human-LLM Interactions

Angana Borah, Rada Mihalcea, Veronica Perez-Rosas


Abstract
Existing challenges in misinformation exposure and susceptibility vary across demographics, as some populations are more vulnerable to misinformation than others. Large language models (LLMs) introduce new dimensions to these challenges through their ability to generate persuasive content at scale and reinforcing existing biases. Our study introduces PANDORA, a framework that investigates the bidirectional persuasion dynamics between LLMs and humans when exposed to misinformative content. We use a multi-agent LLM framework to analyze the spread of misinformation under persuasion among demographic-oriented LLM agents. Our findings show that demographic factors influence LLM susceptibility, with up to 15 percentage point differences in misinformation correctness across groups. Multi-agent LLMs also exhibit echo chamber behavior, aligning with human-like group polarization patterns. Therefore, this work highlights demographic divides in misinformation dynamics and offers insights for future interventions.
Anthology ID:
2026.eacl-long.234
Volume:
Proceedings of the 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Month:
March
Year:
2026
Address:
Rabat, Morocco
Editors:
Vera Demberg, Kentaro Inui, Lluís Marquez
Venue:
EACL
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
5027–5053
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-eacl/2026.eacl-long.234/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Angana Borah, Rada Mihalcea, and Veronica Perez-Rosas. 2026. Persuasion at Play: Understanding Misinformation Dynamics in Demographic-Aware Human-LLM Interactions. In Proceedings of the 19th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 5027–5053, Rabat, Morocco. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Persuasion at Play: Understanding Misinformation Dynamics in Demographic-Aware Human-LLM Interactions (Borah et al., EACL 2026)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-eacl/2026.eacl-long.234.pdf