Debate: Should heads of state and candidates to high office pass a cognitive/ mental fitness test?

Wow, that was quite a dis­cus­sion over at Face­book groups on Neu­ro­science, Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, Psy­chi­a­try & Clin­i­cal Psy­chol­o­gy, Sin­gu­lar­i­ty and beyond as a response to the ques­tion Should heads of state and can­di­dates to high office pass a cognitive/ men­tal fit­ness test?

Here are (light­ly edit­ed, ran­dom­ly ordered, anonymized) some of the sharpest com­ments among the 100+ sub­mit­ted; some Pro, some Con, and many “it depends:”

I won­der what brought this up.

Yes!

Then the bal­ance of polit­i­cal pow­er would shift towards the design­ers of those tests.

I dis­agree because these tests are very bad at pre­dict­ing how good some­one would be in lead­ing a coun­try. It doesn’t require the abil­i­ty to store a lot of infor­ma­tion in your work­ing mem­o­ry. Being a good leader requires only one essen­tial thing: hav­ing the right priorities.

Def­i­nite­ly. We rou­tine­ly screen appli­cants for a wide range of jobs. Apply for the police, you will be test­ed. Join the mil­i­tary, you will be eval­u­at­ed. Should we not know if a can­di­date for the high­est posi­tion in the coun­try has a seri­ous emo­tion­al, intel­lec­tu­al or psy­cho­log­i­cal impairment?

That’s what debates are for.

It would be quite dif­fi­cult to find a test we could agree on being valid enough, and then there’s all ways to bypass hon­est test-tak­ing, espe­cial­ly for pow­er­ful per­sons. Sure­ly it would need to be updat­ed occa­sion­al­ly, too, but by whom? Doubt­ful we could get enough sup­port and trust behind a test that would like­ly cre­ate more bureau­cra­cy than it’s worth. There should be some more min­i­mum require­ments for hold­ing office, but again, find­ing those that we can agree on would be difficult.

Who makes the test? What cog­ni­tive met­rics do we use? The bias­es in that design could lead to sig­nif­i­cant unex­pect­ed or even inten­tion­al­ly skewed results.

The peo­ple get the lead­ers they deserve. Strive to ensure qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion and men­tal health of the peo­ple and the lead­ers will reflect that. Do the oppo­site and we’ll get what we cur­rent­ly have.

In addi­tion to a gen­uine com­pas­sion exam?

Should those who make these cog­ni­tive tests pass a cog­ni­tive fit­ness test too?, or should they make their own tests and pass it them­selves?. It seems the one posi­tion which ought to be held by the wis­est and the most coura­geous is left to be deter­mined by every­one who knows lit­tle or noth­ing about the require­ments of the position.

Actu­al­ly, an age lim­it might ensure this.

Dif­fi­cult. Who decides who is fit?

Con­gress should have to do the same thing!!

Yeeeeeeessssssssssss

Yes, but prob­a­bly nobody would pass it.

No, because if we can’t judge that for our­selves, then what busi­ness do we have vot­ing at all?

I’m com­ing around to the idea that there should be a test for vot­ing cit­i­zens too. We have cit­i­zen­ship for immi­grants to make sure they can par­tic­i­pate prop­er­ly, so why not native born? The prob­lem is, of course, who sets the ques­tions. we found that out in the UK where it includes non­sense like sport­ing triv­ia and obscure his­to­ry factoids.

Should vot­ers pass such a test?

Peo­ple run­ning the test would rig the test to favor their can­di­date. This is a con­tin­u­ing prob­lem in debates and elections.

“The only thing that saves us from the bureau­cra­cy is its inef­fi­cien­cy.” –Eugene McCarthy

Might want to test the vot­ers who are doing the elect­ing as well.

We are not smart enough to do this. Who­ev­er is in pow­er would con­trol who is fit and who isn’t. Way too much bias.

Vot­ing is what decides who gets elect­ed, oth­er­wise it’s no longer a democracy.

To be hon­est, if any test­ing should be done, it should be moral/ ethical/ empath­ic abil­i­ty; weed out the sociopaths and psy­chopaths, which will be not a few.

Cur­rent vet­ting process­es are con­duct­ed by the var­i­ous polit­i­cal par­ties whose vest­ed inter­ests may have more to do with polit­i­cal agen­das (left or right) than find­ing can­di­dates who will serve us for the greater best inter­ests of all people.

I expect if you weed out psy­chopaths there would­n’t be any politi­cians; the impor­tant thing is to have sys­tems in place to min­imise any dam­age they might do.

Yes and ESPECIALLY drug tests for all elect­ed offi­cials. Don’t want to throw peo­ple under the bus but work­ing in pol­i­tics in the past. I’ve seen some behav­ior that was iron­ic con­sid­er­ing their platforms.

Absolute­ly.

On the oth­er hand, screen for drugs, alco­hol, way­ward sex and some sort of stan­dard for cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties, I’m not sure there’d be enough qual­i­fied peo­ple left! </joking/not joking>.

There seems to be a gen­er­al idea that the leader of the peo­ple should them­selves be of the peo­ple. A lot of sci­en­tists have advanced the view that they with their proven intel­lect should rule, when­ev­er they try to gain pow­er they usu­al­ly fail dis­mal­ly. They are con­sid­ered arro­gant, lack­ing life expe­ri­ence, odd, devi­ous, amoral and untrust­wor­thy. The evil sci­en­tist is a pop­u­lar theme in film and literature.

What’s your take?