whether elderly people like Joe Biden and Donald Trump are cognitively competent to be president of the candidates and having .
Author
Leo Gugerty
Professor Emeritus in Psychology, Clemson University
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 who studies and . 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 , 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 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 – and often decades – of effortful in one’s field to build up the knowledge that allows .
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 to understand the multiple factors influencing the current border surge and the positive and negative effects of immigration. Next, generating possible bills may involve and stakeholders who have divergent values and objectives, such as reducing the number of undocumented immigrants but also treating them humanely. Finally, how proposed solutions will affect each objective, and often further negotiation.
Psychological scientists who study these topics agree that people need three key thinking dispositions – referred to as ” ” or “” – 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 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 . 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 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 underlying the mixed up names, so the semantic knowledge that helps them deal with life and work is intact.
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 with age, lasting at least until age 90. This knowledge is stored in that with age.
Research shows that, since intuitive decision-making is , older experts are able to maintain high performance in their field . As with semantic memory, experts’ intuitive decision-making is controlled by posterior brain regions that are .
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 , including education. Thus, they become habits, stable characteristics that capture .
Evidence is emerging that dispositions such as open-mindedness do not decline much and sometimes . 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 . 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 from more than 44 years in political office and and discusses diverse viewpoints with his advisers before reaching a decision.
In contrast, Trump has considerably less experience in politics. in a field where he lacks knowledge and still be more accurate than knowledgeable experts. This claim contradicts the 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 the deliberative dispositions that characterize good decision-making, while .
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 affiliated with Braver Angels, a cross-partisan group that works to reduce political polarization by teaching skills of civil disagreement.
