Obama 46, McCain 71

How Come We Usually Elect Presidents in Their 50s and 60s?

By Dan Rattiner

Ever wonder why people in their fifties and sixties are often the people we elect as our presidents? Some recent studies about brain activity seem to suggest that older people make better decisions than younger people.

Up until now, there had not been much research about this. And older people, who forget why they had wanted to walk into a room, or can't remember somebody's name, have thought that was just part of getting older. They call it having a "senior moment."

The studies, two of them, show something else. Older people, it turns out, think in a broader, more encompassing way than younger people. They may have difficulty accessing everything they take in for a while, but the reason is that they are aware of much more of it. They have a wider view of attention. And when they get in this greater database and combine it with the large database that this wide processing has brought them in the past, the result is more creative and more original thinking.

For example, here's the movie where the 55-year-old King and the 25-year-old Prince are discussing the enemy arrayed before them on the field.

"There they are," the prince shouts. "Let's take 'em. Issue the order to charge."

"Wait a minute," the King says, holding up his palm. "There's very angry-looking rain cloud coming in from behind us. It could be a downpour. If it is, our archers will be blinded. And our advantage in mobility will be compromised. Let's wait until it passes."

The prince curses at his stupid dad and walks off. His mother, who has heard this exchange, tells him to calm down. "Don't be such a hothead," she says.

The study that explains what this is all about was done at Harvard University last year by a psychologist named Shelley Carson. She had 50 college students read a scientific paper that included some passages that had been put in there that were totally irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Then she asked the same number of older people to read this paper.

When both groups were done, Carson asked these volunteers what they remembered. The younger people, who concluded the job faster, had completely skipped over the irrelevant passages. Indeed, they had no memory they were even there. The older people, on the other hand, remembered the irrelevant passages quite well, and nearly all of them had spent time wondering why they were in there and what, if anything, they had to do with the main thrust of the paper. Indeed, several older people even had very original theories about these passages, one of which the test-giver passed on to the author of the paper.

In another study done four years earlier, two groups of Harvard students were given a wide variety of distracting stimuli and asked to work on a fairly simple but separate problem. One group of students consisted of boys and girls, who because of past accomplishments and performance, had shown considerable creativity in their thinking. The other group consisted of boys and girls whose thinking was considered conventional.

The creative group was found to have considerably more trouble ignoring the distracting activity than those who thought in conventional ways. The conventional-thinking people, in ignoring the distractions, were much more easily able to make decisions about the matter at hand. The group of creative people, on the other hand, wanted more time to process the data they took in before making a decision. They said there was a lot to consider.

"We think," said Carson, "older people and more creative-thinking younger people take in much more data than others. And they can use this larger database to make wiser decisions not only for the matter at hand, but for other matters."

These studies reinforce earlier studies that have been done on the amount of brain activity in the frontal cortex of volunteers. Probes are put on the scalp to measure this activity. It seems to act as a filter for incoming information. A large amount in the frontal cortex leads to conventional thinking. A lack of this activity often leads to creative thinking.

"These findings are all very consistent with the context we're building for what wisdom is," said Jacqui Smith, who is a professor of psychology and research at the University of Michigan and who examined this work. "If older people are taking in more information from a situation, and they're then able to combine it with their comparatively greater store of general knowledge, they're going to have a nice advantage."

So who do we vote for - Obama, who is 48, or McCain, who is 71?

I don't know, but it probably doesn't change the fact if you are 80 years old it is probably not a good time to decide on a new place to leave your car keys.

The impetuousness of youth will, in the end, lead to the forgetfulness of old age. What happens in the middle is something else.

This is a wise saying. But I don't remember who said it. It's somebody.

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