Some Americans are questioning whether older people like Joe Biden and Donald Trump are cognitively qualified to be president, amid reports that the candidates are mixing up names when speaking and having trouble remembering details of past personal events.
I believe these reports are clearly alarming. However, it is problematic to evaluate candidates’ knowledge based solely on criticisms that have gained traction in the popular press.
I am a cognitive psychologist who studies decision making and causal reasoning. I think it is equally important to evaluate candidates for the cognitive capacities required to perform a complex leadership job like the presidency.
Research shows that these capacities primarily involve decision-making skills based on comprehensive knowledge of the job, and that the types of mistakes Biden and Trump make increase with age, but that doesn’t mean either candidate is unfit for office.
Intuitive and 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, doctors’ knowledge of how diseases and symptoms are causally related allows them to quickly recognize complex patient symptoms that match a familiar disease stored in memory and then recall effective treatments.
Numerous studies in fields ranging from medicine to military leadership show that it takes years, and often decades, of deliberate practice in one’s field to build knowledge that allows for effective intuitive decisions.
In contrast to the ease and speed of intuitive decisions, the most complex decisions (often the kind faced by a president) require conscious deliberation and mental effort at every stage of the decision-making process. These are the hallmarks of deliberative decision making.
For example, an informed approach to creating an immigration bill might begin with causal reasoning to understand the multiple factors influencing the current border increase and the positive and negative effects of immigration. The creation of potential bills may then involve negotiation among multiple groups of decision-makers and stakeholders with different values and goals, such as reducing the number of undocumented immigrants while also treating them humanely. Finally, making a choice requires estimating how proposed solutions will affect each goal, dealing with value trade-offs, and often further negotiation.
Psychological scientists who study these issues agree that people need three basic thinking tendencies, called “actively open-minded thinking” or “wise reasoning,” for effective deliberative decision-making:
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Open-mindedness: Being open-minded means considering all choices and goals associated with a decision, even if it conflicts with one’s own beliefs.
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Calibrated confidence: This is the ability to express confidence in a particular prediction or choice in terms of probabilities rather than certainty. High confidence should only be achieved if the evidence is weighted according to its reliability and the supporting evidence outweighs the opposing evidence by a large margin.
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Teamwork: This involves seeking alternative perspectives from 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 decisions. But the decisions that elect or terminate a president are hugely complex and hugely important decisions, like how to deal with climate change or international conflicts. This is where deliberative decision making is needed most.
Effective intuitive and conscious decisions both rely on comprehensive knowledge of the job. Particularly during deliberative decision making, people use conceptual knowledge of the world that is consciously accessible, often 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 should be done for forgetfulness and word confusion?
Biden has been criticized for not remembering details about his personal history. This is a fault in episodic memory, which is responsible for our ability to consciously recall personal experiences.
But neuroscientists agree that Biden’s episodic memory errors are within the normal range of healthy aging and that details of one’s personal life are not particularly relevant to a president’s job. This is because episodic memory is different from semantic memories and intuitive knowledge, which are critical to good decision making.
Mixing up names, as Biden and Trump occasionally do, is also unlikely to affect job performance. Rather, it consists of a momentary error while retrieving information from semantic memory. When people make this common mistake, they often still understand the concepts underlying confused nouns, so the semantic knowledge that helps them cope with life and work remains intact.
Making complex decisions as you get older
Because we all use countless concepts to navigate the world every day, our semantic knowledge generally does not decline with age and lasts at least until age 90. This information is stored in hindbrain regions that deteriorate relatively slowly with age.
Research shows that because intuitive decision-making is learned through extensive practice, older professionals can maintain high performance in their field as long as they continue to use and apply their skills. As with semantic memory, experts’ intuitive decision-making processes are controlled by hindbrain regions that are less affected by aging.
However, older professionals need more practice than younger professionals to maintain their previous skill level.
Thinking dispositions that are key to deliberative decision making are influenced by early social learning, including education. Thus, habits become stable traits that represent how people typically make decisions.
There is emerging evidence that tendencies such as open-mindedness do not decrease much with age, and sometimes even increase. 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 Survey. A statistical analysis showed that individuals between the ages of 26 and 88 had very similar levels of open-mindedness, while those with more education were more open-minded.
Applying this to candidates
Regarding the 2024 presidential candidates, Biden has extensive knowledge and experience in politics for more than 44 years in political office, and he thoroughly researches and discusses different perspectives with his advisors before reaching a decision.
By contrast, Trump has much less experience in politics. He claims to be able to make intuitive decisions using “common sense” in an area where he lacks knowledge and still make more accurate decisions than knowledgeable experts. This claim is contradicted by research showing that extensive job-specific experience and knowledge are required for intuitive decisions to be consistently effective.
My general take from everything I’ve read on this subject is that both candidates show aspects of good and bad decision making. But I think Biden regularly displays the deliberative tendencies that characterize good decision-making, while Trump does so less.
So if you’re trying to evaluate how or whether a candidate’s age will affect your vote, I believe you should mostly ignore concerns about mixing up names and not recalling personal memories. Instead, ask yourself which candidate has the basic cognitive capacity to make complex decisions. That is, knowledge of political issues as well as decision-making tendencies such as open-mindedness, calibrating confidence against evidence, and a willingness to have your thinking challenged by advisors and critics.
Science cannot make precise predictions about individuals. But research shows that once a leader develops these capacities, they generally do not diminish much, even in older age, as long as they are actively used.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent, nonprofit news organization providing facts and authoritative analysis to help you understand our complex world. Written by: Leo Gugerty, Clemson University
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Leo Gugerty is affiliated with Braver Angels, a cross-party group that tries to reduce political polarization by teaching civil disagreement skills.