Some Americans are questioning whether elderly people like Joe Biden and Donald Trump are cognitively competent to be president amid reports of candidates mixing names while speaking and having difficulty remembering details of past personal events.
I believe these reports are clearly worrying. However, it is problematic to assess candidates’ cognition based solely on criticisms that have gained traction in the popular press.
I am one cognitive psychologist who studies decision making It is causal reasoning. I argue that it is equally important to evaluate candidates on the cognitive capabilities that are truly necessary to perform a complex leadership role, such as the presidency.
Research shows that these skills primarily involve decision-making skills based on broad job-related knowledge, and that the types of mistakes made by Biden and Trump increase agedbut this does not mean that any of the candidates are unsuitable for the position.
Intuitive versus deliberative decision making
There are two types of decision making: intuitive and deliberative.
In intuitive decision making, people quickly and easily recognize a complex situation and remember an effective solution. For example, doctors’ knowledge of how diseases and symptoms are causally related allows them to quickly recognize a complex set of patient symptoms as corresponding to a familiar illness stored in memory and then recall effective treatments.
A large body of research in areas ranging from medicine to military leadership shows that takes years – and often decades – of effort deliberate practice in your area to build the knowledge that allows effective intuitive decisions.
In contrast to the ease and speed of intuitive decisions, more complex decisions – often those facing a president – require conscious deliberation and mental effort at each stage of the decision-making process. These are the hallmarks of deliberative decision making.
For example, a deliberative approach to creating an immigration bill might start with causal reasoning understand the multiple factors that influence the current increase in borders and the positive and negative effects of immigration. Next, generating potential invoices may involve negotiation between various groups of decision makers and stakeholders who have divergent values and goals, such as reducing the number of undocumented immigrants but also treating them humanely. Finally, making a choice requires foresight how the proposed solutions will affect each objective, dealing with value trade-offs and often more negotiations.
Psychological scientists who study these topics agree that people need three main thinking dispositions – called “ actively open thinking” or “wise reasoning” – for effective deliberative decision-making:
-
Open-mindedness: Being open-minded means considering all choices and goals relevant to a decision, even if they conflict with one’s beliefs.
-
Calibrated confidence: This is the ability to express confidence in a given prediction or choice in terms of probabilities rather than certainties. High confidence should only be given if the evidence has been weighed based on your credibility and the supporting evidence outweighs the contrary evidence by a large margin.
-
Teamwork: involves seeking alternative perspectives within the advisory team itself and from stakeholders with conflicting interests.
Presidents need to use intuitive and deliberative decision-making. The ability to make smaller decisions effectively using intuitive decision making frees up time to focus on larger decisions. However, the decisions that make or break a president are extremely complex and have major consequences, such as how to deal with climate change or international conflicts. This is where deliberative decision-making is most necessary.
Effective intuitive and deliberative decisions depend on extensive work-related knowledge. Especially during deliberative decision making, people use conceptual knowledge of the world that is consciously accessible, commonly referred to as semantic memory. Knowledge of concepts such as tariffs, Middle Eastern history and diplomatic strategies allows presidents to quickly grasp new developments and understand their nuances. It also helps them fulfill an important job requirement: explaining their decisions to political opponents and the public.
What to do about forgetfulness and word confusion
Biden was criticized for not remembering details of your personal past. This is an error in episodic memory, responsible for our ability to consciously recall personal experiences.
Neurologists agree, however, that Biden’s episodic memory errors are within the range of normal and healthy aging and that the details of one’s personal life are not especially relevant to a president’s work. This is because episodic memory is distinct from semantic memories and intuitive knowledge, which are essential for good decision making.
Confusing names, as Biden and Trump occasionally do, is also unlikely to affect job performance. Rather, it simply involves a momentary error in retrieving information from semantic memory. When people make this common mistake, they generally still understands the concepts underlying confusing names so that the semantic knowledge that helps them cope with life and work is intact.
Making complex decisions as you age
Because we all use a multitude of concepts to navigate the world every day, our semantic knowledge typically does not decrease with age, lasting at least until the age of 90. This knowledge is stored in posterior brain regions what deteriorate relatively slowly with age.
Research shows that since intuitive decision making is learned through extensive practiceolder specialists are able to maintain high performance in their field as long as they continue to use and practice their skills. As with semantic memory, experts’ intuitive decision-making is controlled by posterior brain regions that are less compromised by aging.
However, older experts must practice more than younger ones to maintain previous skill levels.
The dispositions of thought that are fundamental to deliberative decision making are influenced by early social learning, including education. Thus, they become habits, stable characteristics that capture how people normally make decisions.
Evidence is emerging that dispositions such as open-mindedness do not greatly diminish and sometimes even increases with age. To investigate this, I looked at the extent to which open-mindedness correlated with age, while controlling for education level, using data from 5,700 people in the 2016 British election study. A statistical analysis showed that individuals aged between 26 and 88 had very similar levels of open-mindedness, while those with more education were more open-minded.
Applying this to candidates
As for the 2024 presidential candidates, Biden has extensive knowledge and experience in politics over 44 years in political and thoroughly investigate and discusses different points of view with your advisors before making a decision.
In contrast, Trump has considerably less experience in politics. He claims he can make intuitive decisions in a field where he has no knowledge using “common sense” and still be more accurate than experienced experts. This statement contradicts the research showing that broad specific work experience and knowledge is necessary for intuitive decisions to be consistently effective.
My general interpretation of everything I’ve read about this is that both candidates show aspects of good and bad decision making. However, I believe Biden regularly displays the deliberative dispositions that characterize good decision-making, while Trump does this less often.
Therefore, if you are trying to evaluate how or whether candidates’ ages should affect their vote, I believe you should mostly ignore concerns about mixing up names and not recalling personal memories. Instead, ask yourself which candidate has the essential cognitive capabilities needed to make complex decisions. That is, knowledge of political issues, as well as decision-making dispositions such as open-mindedness, calibration of trust based on evidence, and a willingness to have one’s thinking challenged by advisors and critics.
Science cannot make firm predictions about individuals. However, research suggests that once a leader has developed these capabilities, they typically do not diminish much, even with advancing age, as long as they are actively utilized.
This article was republished from The conversation, an independent, nonprofit news organization that brings you trusted facts and analysis to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Leo Gugerty, Clemson University
See more information:
Leo Gugerty is affiliated with Braver Angels, a cross-partisan group that works to reduce political polarization by teaching civil disagreement skills.
