The Case of Donald Trump: Ponderings of a Cognitive Psychologist
Howard Gardner © 2024
From my earliest years, I’ve been interested in the human mind—well before I’d even heard the word “psychology,” let alone the field of cognitive psychology. Once I’d learned about this area of study, I devoted several decades to it, trying to understand the dimensions of human cognition. I’ve written many books—at least half of which contain the word “mind” in the title. And while I am best known for the theory of multiple intelligences, I’ve also studied the minds of leaders, the minds of creators, and the minds of synthesizers.
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Like most of my academic colleagues, I’ve been bewildered by Donald Trump’s amazing success in holding the attention of the public and gaining its support in now three presidential election cycles.
So allow me to apply my own psychological lens to the case of Donald Trump and indicate where I have come to realize that it falls short.
Intelligences
Clearly, Trump has enough linguistic intelligence to speak with reasonable coherence for hours, and enough logical-mathematical intelligence to compete—and sometimes win—in the areas of real estate and finance. In that sense, he is a traditionally smart person and would presumably do well on IQ tests.
However, he is extremely ambivalent about this state of affairs. On the one hand, he brags about his own intelligence and even more about the intellect of his uncle who apparently taught for many years at MIT. But on the other hand, Trump has also declared: “I love the poorly educated.” There’s little evidence that he reads carefully and thoughtfully—or even that he is a very good business-person rather than an extremely clever manipulator of the real-estate system in various venues.
As for other intelligences: I think Trump gets fairly high grades for bodily-kinesthetic intelligence—he moves around easily and is a regular presence on the golf course. At his rallies, he plays and enjoys music—sometimes swaying back-and-forth—and so presumably he has reasonable musical intelligence.
He could not mesmerize (and sometimes manipulate) crowds, nor do well in bargaining if he did not have exceptional interpersonal intelligence. In thinking about crowds, there’s a relevant scholarly tradition dating back to Gustave Le Bon’s classic work on The Crowd (original publication 1895). Whether it is Le Bon's crowd of the 19th century or David Riesman's "lonely crowd" of the mid-20th century—crowds are not known for their intellectual strength. Indeed, they often seem to reflect a lowest common denominator. Of course we don’t know how—or even whether—behaviors in the crowd translate to decisions at the ballet box.
Adlai Stevenson II
As for intrapersonal intelligence—understanding of oneself—I see scant evidence of that in Trump. But this type of intelligence is not particularly important for an American politician. Ronald Reagan had little apparent intrapersonal intelligence, and on most criteria, he was an extremely successful candidate and president. In contrast, twice-Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson was very introspective but failed to do well in the polls.
And so, from my multiple-intelligences perspective, Donald Trump does perfectly well.
What about as a political leader?
In my studies, I’ve concluded that effective leaders exhibit two properties: they tell stories convincingly and they embody those stories in their own lives.
Dylan Stewart/AP Photo
No doubt Trump is a masterful storyteller. For instance, he communicates effectively what it’s like to be hounded by legal authorities and what it means to be a “real American” and to “Make America Great.” Of course, many of us doubt that the Trump personal story is valid. But, as reporter Daniel Schorr once quipped: “Sincerity: if you can fake it, you've got it made.”
Creativity
We can accept that Trump is a successful leader, but would one want to credit him with having a creative mind?
On my definition, creators are individuals who come up with a set of ideas or products, capture the attention of relevant audiences, and whose creations eventually change the way in which members of their respective audiences perceive the world. Think Albert Einstein, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, The Beatles. Often, these creators master the symbol system or medium of their time, drawing on it and sculpting it successfully.
A few years ago, I would never have thought of Donald Trump as creative. But he clearly has mastered a variety of social media, as well as aspects of traditional print and broadcast media. He’s done so successfully—the way that Franklin Roosevelt did with radio in the 1930s, John F. Kennedy did with television in the early 1960s, and Barack Obama did with the Internet of 2008.
In some ways—and I hope I’m not fooling myself—my own work as a cognitive psychologist does help to explain Donald Trump’s electoral success in the United States in the first quarter of the 21st century. Indeed, back in 2015, I credited him with “media intelligence,” and I would underscore that characterization today. Yet at the same time, I admit—indeed, stress—that the tools of cognitive psychology fail to illuminate adequately the Trump phenomenon.
My late friend Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi—renowned for his concept of “flow”—once quipped to me: “Howard, cognition is the easy part—the challenge is to understand motivation.”
I think Mihaly was right. But I would edit his comment as follows: “Both motivation and personality are far more difficult to understand and to apply to phenomena than is cognition—my own preferred perspective.”
When Mihaly made that comment, we were still in an age where artificial intelligence was primitive—and no one had conceived of ChatGPT or other large language instruments. Now, of course, these instruments are as multiply-intelligent as any human being—or, indeed, as a cluster of highly multiply-intelligent humans.
If we were to attempt to provide a rounded explanation of the astounding success of Donald Trump, cognitive psychology alone would not suffice. Instead, we would have to explore:
The nature of human personality: both Trump’s unusual personality profile—as explained by his niece Mary and other psychologically-oriented analysts—as well as;
The motivations of half the American voting public. Even after (or, perhaps, especially after) having observed him in and out of office for a decade and in and out of multiple courtrooms—many still support him. Indeed, many continue to lionize him.
At least for now, the tools of the cognitivist do not suffice—we will have to combine cognition, personality, and motivation—a challenge for the synthesizing mind. And even though I’ve studied synthesis for decades, I still would never have predicted the amazing success of Donald Trump.
Final thought
As some readers of these lines may know, for over thirty years, my colleagues and I have studied “Good Work” and good citizenship—what it means to lead lives that are moral and ethical. Donald Trump does not exemplify either of those virtues. How and why cognition can be mobilized for the range of human virtues and vices—perhaps that’s a challenge better left to dramatists.
