(Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Midjourney)
Joe Biden and Donald Trump's cognitive capacities are plagued with various speculations, with many questioning their capacity for the presidency. A cognitive psychologist weighed in on the two presidentiables' capacities and who between the two has better decision-making skills.
Biden vs Trump: Who Has Better Decision-Making Skills
Leo Gugerty, a cognitive psychologist, compared Biden's and Trump's cognitive skills. According to him, there are two types of decision-making: intuitive and deliberative.
Intuitive decision-making occurs when people quickly and easily recognize a complex situation and recall effective solutions from memory. Meanwhile, deliberative decision-making takes years of practice and is often observed in large bodies of research, such as medicine and the military.
The most complex decisions, usually those that a president has to make, need careful consideration and work at every stage of the decision-making process. Deliberate decision-making has the following qualities.
Open-mindedness: Being open-minded entails considering all options and goals pertinent to a decision, even if they go against one's personal convictions.
Calibrated confidence: The capacity to articulate confidence in a prediction or decision in terms of probability instead of absolutes is known as calibrated confidence. Only when the evidence is credibly weighted, and the weight of the supporting evidence is significantly more than that of the opposing evidence, can one reasonably be highly confident.
Teamwork: Working as a team entails seeking different viewpoints from stakeholders with competing interests and other members of one's own advisory team.
As for the two presidentiables, Gugerty said Biden, having served in political office for more than 44 years, has a wealth of political knowledge and experience. Before making a decision, he carefully considers all points of view and consults with his advisors.
Trump, on the other hand, has significantly less political experience. Also, Trump says he can use "common sense" to make intuitive conclusions in an area of knowledge he lacks and still be more accurate than educated specialists.
The expert concluded that both show good and poor decision-making based on what he read about the two politicians. However, he believes Biden consistently demonstrates the thoughtful tendencies that define sound decision-making, whereas Trump does it less frequently.
Biden May Have Parkinson's Disease
Last week, Trump and Biden faced each other for the first 2024 presidential debate. Many were concerned about Biden's health because he reportedly appeared to be struggling to manage his train of thought and lost it from time to time.
Professor Robert Howard, an expert in old-age psychiatry at University College London, shared his expert opinion about Biden's condition. He clarified that they could not diagnose one without examining them, but based on what he saw at the debate, Biden might have Parkinson's.
Howard pointed out Biden's freezing, rambling, and difficulty maintaining attention. There were noticeable "fluctuations and dips in attention," key signs of Parkinson's.
Howard shut down the rumors that Biden had dementia. He compared Parkinson's disease to a flickering lightbulb and dementia to the house's blown lights. Parkinson's fades in and out sporadically, just like Biden's case.
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