By Leo Gugerty
Some Americans are questioning whether elderly people like Joe Biden and Donald Trump are cognitively competent to be president amid reports of the candidates mixing up names while speaking and having trouble recalling details of past personal events.
I believe these reports are clearly concerning. However, it’s problematic to evaluate the candidates’ cognition based only on the critiques that have gained traction in the popular press.
I’m a cognitive psychologist who studies decision-making and causal reasoning. I argue that it’s just as important to assess candidates on the cognitive capacities that are actually required for performing a complex leadership job such as the presidency.
Research shows that these capacities mainly involve decision-making skills grounded in extensive job-related knowledge, and that the types of errors made by Biden and Trump do increase with age, but that doesn’t mean either candidate is unfit for office.
Intuitive vs. 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 recall an effective solution from memory. For example, physicians’ knowledge of how diseases and symptoms are causally related allows them to quickly recognize a complex set of patient symptoms as matching a familiar disease stored in memory and then recall effective treatments.
A large body of research on fields from medicine to military leadership shows that it takes years – and often decades – of effortful deliberate practice in one’s field to build up the knowledge that allows effective intuitive decisions.
In contrast to the ease and speed of intuitive decisions, the most complex decisions – often the kinds that confront 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 to understand the multiple factors influencing the current border surge and the positive and negative effects of immigration. Next, generating possible bills may involve negotiating among multiple groups of decision-makers and stakeholders who have divergent values and objectives, such as reducing the number of undocumented immigrants but also treating them humanely. Finally, making a choice requires forecasting how proposed solutions will affect each objective, dealing with value trade-offs and often further negotiation.
Psychological scientists who study these topics agree that people need three key thinking dispositions – referred to as “ actively open-minded thinking” or “wise reasoning” – for effective deliberative decision-making:
- Open-mindedness: Being open-minded means considering all of the choices and objectives relevant to a decision, even if they conflict with one’s own beliefs.
- Calibrated confidence: This is the ability to express confidence in a given forecast or choice in terms of probabilities rather than as certainties. One should have high confidence only if evidence has been weighted based on its credibility and supportive evidence outweighs opposing evidence by a large margin.
- Teamwork: This involves seeking alternative perspectives from within one’s own advisory team and from stakeholders with conflicting interests.
Presidents need to use both intuitive and deliberative decision-making. The ability to make smaller decisions effectively using intuitive decision-making frees up time to concentrate on larger ones. However, the decisions that make or break a president are exceedingly complex and highly consequential, such as how to handle climate change or international conflicts. Here is where deliberative decision-making is most needed.
Effective intuitive and deliberative decisions both rely on extensive job-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 East 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 make of forgetfulness and word mix-ups
Biden has been criticized for not recalling details of his personal past. This is an error in episodic memory, which is responsible for our ability to consciously recollect personal experiences.
Neurologists agree, however, that Biden’s episodic memory errors are within the range of normal healthy aging and that the details of one’s personal life are not especially relevant to a president’s job. That’s because episodic memory is distinct from the semantic memories and intuitive knowledge that are critical to good decision-making.
Mixing up 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 error, they usually still understand the concepts underlying the mixed up names, so the semantic knowledge that helps them deal with life and work is intact.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Making complex decisions as you age
Because all of us use a myriad of concepts to navigate the world every day, our semantic knowledge typically does not decrease with age, lasting at least until age 90. This knowledge is stored in posterior brain regions that deteriorate relatively slowly with age.
Research shows that, since intuitive decision-making is learned by extensive practice, older experts are able to maintain high performance in their field as long as they keep using and practicing 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 put in more practice than younger ones to maintain previous skill levels.
The thinking dispositions that are key to deliberative decision-making are influenced by early social learning, including education. Thus, they become habits, stable characteristics that capture how people typically make decisions.
Evidence is emerging that dispositions such as open-mindedness do not decline much and sometimes even increase with age. To investigate this, I looked at how well 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 ages 26 to 88 had very similar levels of open-mindedness, while those with more education were more open-minded.
Applying this to the candidates
As for the 2024 presidential candidates, Biden has extensive knowledge and experience in politics from more than 44 years in political office and thoroughly investigates and discusses diverse viewpoints with his advisers before reaching a decision.
In contrast, Trump has considerably less experience in politics. He claims that he can make intuitive decisions in a field where he lacks knowledge by using “common sense” and still be more accurate than knowledgeable experts. This claim contradicts the research showing that extensive job-specific experience and knowledge is necessary for intuitive decisions to be consistently effective.
My overall interpretation from everything I’ve read about this is that both candidates show aspects of good and poor decision-making. However, I believe Biden regularly displays the deliberative dispositions that characterize good decision-making, while Trump does this less often.
So, if you’re trying to assess how or whether the candidates’ age should affect your vote, I believe you should mostly ignore the concerns about mixing up names and not recalling personal memories. Rather, ask yourself which candidate has the key cognitive capacities necessary to make complex decisions. That is, knowledge of political affairs as well as decision-making dispositions such as open-mindedness, calibrating confidence to evidence, and a willingness to have your thinking challenged by advisers and critics.
Science cannot make firm predictions about individuals. However, the research suggests that once a leader has developed these capacities, they typically do not decrease much even with advanced age, as long as they are actively used.
Leo Gugerty is Professor Emeritus in Psychology at Clemson University.
The Conversation arose out of deep-seated concerns for the fading quality of our public discourse and recognition of the vital role that academic experts could play in the public arena. Information has always been essential to democracy. It’s a societal good, like clean water. But many now find it difficult to put their trust in the media and experts who have spent years researching a topic. Instead, they listen to those who have the loudest voices. Those uninformed views are amplified by social media networks that reward those who spark outrage instead of insight or thoughtful discussion. The Conversation seeks to be part of the solution to this problem, to raise up the voices of true experts and to make their knowledge available to everyone. The Conversation publishes nightly at 9 p.m. on FlaglerLive.
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
So what’s the argument here? That the democratic candidate fills his diapers only half as often as the republican one?
Pogo says
@Leo Gugerty (and FlaglerLive)
Thank you.
P.S.
FlaglerLive, I appreciate the equality of standing you provide to comments, even when a comment is a symptom of RFK’s brain worm. If I were cynical, I might say the worm was also the clickbait on a mindlessly juvenile troll’s hook.
I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.
— Newt Gingrich
https://www.google.com/search?q=newt+gingrich
Well, that problem is solved.
DaleL says
Professor Leo Gugerty wrote: “Trump has considerably less experience in politics. He claims that he can make intuitive decisions in a field where he lacks knowledge by using “common sense” and still be more accurate than knowledgeable experts.”
This is a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. It is a systematic tendency to engage in erroneous forms of thinking and judging.
I submit that both Biden and Trump overestimate their own abilities. This is common in the elderly. (I should know; I’m only a couple years younger than Trump.) Further, neither of them are getting any younger or more capable.
However, Trump has threatened to use the Justice Department against his political opponents. He and his associates attempted to prevent the Constitutionally mandated peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election. More than a few of his political associates have either been convicted of felonies or are under indictment. Trump is a felon and is the defendant in additional state and federal court cases. Even if he were to not intentionally abuse the office of President, his cognitive bias (Dunning-Kruger) makes him likely to make catastrophic decisions.
Then there is his character. Trump is an adulterer. Trump is a serial liar. He said repeatedly he would release his tax returns, nope. He is a cheat. His charity and university were frauds. He cheats at golf. Except for the Apprentice, bankruptcy is the normal result for his businesses. I would not trust Trump to take care of my dog, let alone my Country.
richiesanto says
Well said, Dale.
I think many Republicans in America have lost (or never had) their ability to use common sense to assist them to make decisions. They vote with the party or because they feel the candidate will improve the quality of their life (what about the other 330 million people?).
Trump has continuously exhibited immoral, unethical and illegal behavior for the better part of his life. His own cabinet members (Kelly, Milley, Bolton, Esper etc.) have expressed that he is dangerous for our country and our democracy.
So what’s up with the 7 million votes that voted for him in 2020? Have they been swayed by his brilliant rhetoric (eg. battery powered boats and sharks)? Is it his lovely orange glow? Maybe it’s the way he denigrates and insults anyone who doesn’t agree with him? Please trumpers, chime in!
DaleL says
Trump’s recent incomprehensible rambling speech about battery powered boats and sharks was mind boggling.
As a military history buff, I had to think about how ignorant Trump must be. Navies have been using massive batteries to power boats for over 100 years. The boats are submarines (U-boats). Even today, non-nuclear subs are battery powered while underwater. Battery powered torpedoes appeared during WWII. The New Mexico class battleships and the two subsequent classes of American battleships, beginning in 1915, were powered with turbo electric drives. The steam turbines turned massive generators which then powered the motors to turn the propellers. This was heavy, but eliminated the need for gears and allowed for better watertight subdivision of the ships.
Joe D says
As a retired Child and Family Clinical Nurse Therapist, I applaud this article on Intuitive decision making. It should be required in every Senior high school (and again in college), in the USA….using thought out decision steps BEFORE you open your mouth, and especially BEFORE you make an important decision affecting yourself and others. I cannot count the number of times clients have said “I don’t know what I was thinking of when I said(did) that?” The problem was, there WAS NO thought…it was more of a “knee jerk reaction” (OPPS)!
AND for Samuel L.B.:
What the writer is saying, is that Biden has 40+ years of political experience, knows how to negotiate, knows how to do research on the subject and the people involved. When he’s unfamiliar with the issue, he CONSULTS other experts in the issue….THEN makes a (hopefully) thought out decision.
Trump, however (although he has decades of experience in the BUSINESS world) has much more LIMITED experience in the political world. So instead of research, negotiation and consensus, Donald Trump tends to use (what he calls???) common sense…then “SHOOTS from the HIP, with little or no thoughts about the consequences of what he says or does. And despite the attempts of those advisers he has around him…frequently does the EXACT OPPOSITE of what they recommend…with frequently DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES!
YankeeExPat says
FELON / RAPIST !—OLD FART , ……….I ll go with the later !
Laurel says
It is sad to me that there are people (commenters here) who love to hate seniors. I respected seniors all my life, and now that I’m here, it’s a shame to listen, or read, such nasty garbage. I guess for some it gives them some sort of vile satisfaction. The whole article was ignored for an ignorant joke. Oh well, they are who they are.
Now for the fun! We went to the Hackney Diamonds concert in Orlando. Wow! Wow! Wow! Sir Michael Philip Jagger blew us away! The 80 year old jumped, ran, skipped and danced all over the stage non stop, for two hours, while singing his butt off! He and Kieth Richards (and their extremely talented group) preformed several of the past songs they wrote together, and from the new album they wrote. From what I’ve read, they’ve written another new album which should be out soon.
Mick Jagger runs, practices palates, kick boxes, practices yoga and dances. Bless him, he’s an inspiration! So comment your bigotry all you want. I’ll go with the rock and roll…’cause I like it!
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
Years ago I dated someone whose grandparents were in their late 70s. The grandfather was a retired new york state trooper and had served in the coast guard. He was ridiculously racist, almost to the point of parody.
He and grandma would start off their day with vodka in their coffee. Then he’d move on to natty light, and grandma would keep it up with The Aristocrat. By mid afternoon they’d usually had at least one drunken fight with each other. They had three kids by the way, all of them grown and with substance abuse issues. The oldest, their son, went to prison for meth. One of the daughters was in and out of rehab and the other married a clone of the grandfather, very much keeping the cycle of abuse going.
Don’t forget to respect seniors, right?
Laurel says
Yeah, we’re all drug addicts. Feel better?
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
I’d say instead of demanding respect because you’re old and then crying about not getting it and how the world is stacked against boomers you should instead earn respect by not being a garbage human being. Regardless, if you’re a drug addict I’d say you should seek professional help and kudos to you for admitting it in a public forum, the first step is the most difficult.