everyday empathic accuracy in younger and older couples do you need to see your partner to know his or her feelings on average older adults are less accurate than younger adults at recognizing emotions from faces or voices we challenge the view that such differences in emotionrecognition tasks reflect differences in empathic accuracy the ability to infer other peoples feelings empathic accuracy relies not only on sensory cues eg emotional expressions but also on knowledge about the target person using smartphonebased measures we assessed empathic accuracy in younger and older couples daily lives and found that younger adults empathic accuracy was higher than older adults empathic accuracy when their partners were visibly present during the partners absence however when judgments relied exclusively on knowledge of those partners no age differences emerged and performance in both age groups was still more accurate than chance we conclude that across adulthood sensory information and knowledge differentially support empathic accuracy laboratory emotionrecognition tasks may therefore underestimate older adults empathic competencies