Expert Q&A - Yale's Gautam Mukunda on How to Pick America’s Next President

With the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election quickly approaching, American voters will make one of the most consequential decisions in the world in just a few short weeks.

To better understand what voters, especially undecided voters, should be paying attention to, we asked Gautam Mukunda, Yale School of Management professor and author of “Picking Presidents,” to share his insights on the most important things to consider before casting a ballot. 

What are the most glaring red flags that should be instant deal breakers for voters?

Gautam Mukunda: The most glaring red flags are personality and psychological disorders. These are immensely dangerous, because they create a positive superficial impression but have enormous long-term costs in a leader.

The most dangerous are the ones psychologists call “The Dark Triad”: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.  Narcissists have a falsely high self-image and demand that others maintain it. Machiavellians are manipulators who lie and deceive to pursue their own ends. And psychopaths functionally lack a conscience and are willing to tell any lie and harm any person in order to fulfill their desires for power and domination.

Narcissists and psychopaths in particular often have extraordinary charisma that makes people willing to suspend their better judgment and give them power and authority, but this is almost always a disastrous mistake.

What are a few important green flags that may get overlooked?

GM: The most important overlooked “green flag” for voters, and for leader selection more broadly, is what the great psychologist Dean Simonton refers to as “intellectual brilliance.” This is not the same thing as intelligence, although they are related. It adds curiosity, openness to new ideas, and demonstrated abilities like writing books or speaking multiple languages.

Across fields, Simonton has found that intellectual brilliance is the strongest individual-level predictor of leadership success.

In the Presidency, his research concludes that it is the only statistically significant individual-level predictor of success.

What are some seemingly small qualities that could make all the difference (either way)?

GM: In a closely balanced country like this one, every small factor can make a huge difference. The election has also been completely transformed by Vice President Harris’s accession to the top of the ticket, and its true shape hasn’t really settled down yet.

The small quality that is likely to make a big difference is empathy. People trust leaders whom they believe care for them. Warmth and competence are both important traits in leaders, but competence doesn’t impress people if they don’t perceive warmth.

Vice President Harris’s selection of [Minnesota] Governor Tim Walz suggests that she is emphasizing this in her campaign strategy, while Trump’s selection of JD Vance, who struggles to display empathy and has a long history of statements that seem to lack it, suggests that he feels otherwise and is emphasizing his “fighter” persona. 

If someone has decided who they will vote for, do you think AI generated fake content could change their mind or are people too skeptical/aware that speech and video can be convincingly manipulated now?

GM: If someone has already decided who they will vote for, it’s unlikely that fake content will have much of an effect.

Only a relatively small fraction of voters swing from election to election (although those who do are all-important because the two parties are so closely balanced). Most voters, even most who call themselves independent, vote for the same party time after time.

People who have made up their minds tend to have strong cases of confirmation bias – they pay attention to information that confirms their previous beliefs and ignore information that challenges it.

Given that, fake content, AI generated or not, is unlikely to sway decided voters, although it may reinforce their preexisting preferences.

If a truly undecided voter asked you for one piece of advice on how to choose one way or the other, what would that advice be?

GM: More than anything else, the Presidency is about power. We call the President “the most powerful person in the world” and that’s a literally true statement, not just hyperbole.

You should only give power to someone you trust, because once they have power, it’s almost impossible to take it back. I’d advise them to look at the two candidates and ask themselves a simple question. Which one do you trust to do the right thing, in the dark, when no one is looking?

“Neither” is not an acceptable answer. You have to pick one of them.

But, based on their track records, the way they’ve spent their lives, and the way they treat people, which one do you think will use that power for the benefit of all Americans, and not just themselves?

Historically, what has been a more successful strategy to change minds – amplify the other candidate’s weaknesses or boost your own strengths?

GM: No one likes negative campaigning, but the political science evidence (particularly the work of Ted Brader) suggests that negative campaigning is actually more effective than positive campaigning.

Negative campaigning challenges people’s preconceived notions – at least occasionally, it makes them think. Positive campaigning tends to have much less effect.

That historical evidence may be less meaningful in this election, though. Vice President Harris has not had a prolonged primary season to introduce herself to voters and, even though she has been Vice President, most likely still know little about her background or beliefs. This is particularly true for undecided voters, who generally pay far less attention to politics than partisans do and are consequently less informed about it.

This presents Harris with the chance to define herself in a positive way with those voters, while outsourcing attacks on Trump to campaign surrogates while allowing his own tendency to make provocative statements to alienate swing voters.

Are there any best practices from history that have fallen by the wayside today, either on the candidates’ side or the voters’ side?

GM: The fact that there are few swing voters doesn’t mean that there aren’t any, or that they don’t matter. Today, too many candidates focus their efforts on “firing up the base” and ignore persuasion. This is a mistake in every way.

First, because swing voters are more valuable than [voters] in the base – every person you persuade from your opponent to yourself is worth two votes, not one.

Second, because the reason someone is in “the base” is because they are a reliable voter for you. That’s what being in the base means. Targeting your efforts on people who are already going to vote for you is wasted effort.

Candidates traditionally focused on persuasion of undecided voters as soon as they won their primary. They should go back to doing it again.

Voters, on the other hand, should stop scorning political parties. In every country in the world, parties are what make democracy work. Voters have increasingly distanced themselves from the parties and seem to disdain the role of the parties in selecting agendas and candidates.

But we need the parties to be strong enough to block unfit candidates and force candidates to pursue longer-term interests instead of purely sectarian goals that get them through the next election.

Instead of scorning parties, voters should join them and get more involved in how they work. 

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