On Human Behavior and Elections

By training, education, and profession, I am a Behavioralist, working primarily in adult education, where I write comprehensive programs to address career-centered development and workplace policies and practices, including things (that everyone has been told they should hate!) like performance management and job review systems. I’ve done this work for nearly thirty years. That’s all to establish my bona fides in understanding of how people “behave” in public and workplace situations.

The most fundamental thing to understand about humans is that we are creatures of habit. We do the same things over and over again, some good for us, others, not so much. Decades of research, including my own, support the conclusion that the best predictor of future performance is past behavior. What you have always done, you will always do, in the absence of an enormous and earth-shaking shift in your own knowledge or values systems.

First, recognize that candidates are human beings. No, really! As much as we’d like to believe that President Obama is a god from on high and that Mitt Romney is the devil from the pits of hell, they are both (reasonably exceptional) men, sharing many of the faults and foibles of we mere mortals. It’s basically useless to listen to anything either man says by way of campaign promises, because they really do mean almost nothing. What is much more instructive is to look at what each candidate has actually done in public life. So that this missive will not go on for limitless pages (my last work treatise on this topic was over 350 pages), I’ll share just one simple example from Tuesday’s debate.

President Obama was actually exceptionally effective in answer to Katherine Fenton’s question on what he would do over the next four years to ensure equal pay for women. He provided evidence of what he had already done (his behavior) by citing the Lily Ledbetter Act and other initiatives enacted or proposed. That behavior, which Ms Fenton later said in an MSNBC interview hadn’t addressed her question, was actually the very best answer anyone could have given. In a job interview, for example, which is what a campaign is, after all, the skilled interviewer will look for specific past evidence of a behavior having been executed on the job as the prima facie evidence that that behavior would be repeated in the future. Ms Fenton, in not understanding that, was “unable to make a decision” about which candidate to support. She didn’t get that her question was answered perfectly. Mitt Romney, by contrast, provided an unrelated anecdote about “women in binders” that any competent job interviewer would have seen for what it was: a deflection to cover up the fact that there was NO RELEVANT EXPERIENCE available to share.

The conclusion, therefore, is that we must look at what an individual has actually done, not what he or she says will be done in the context of a promise, to project how that individual will perform in any given role. President Obama, for the most part, has either delivered results, or been deliberately blocked from successful execution, on an enormous list of accomplishments from healthcare reform, to equal pay, to ending the Iraq war, etc., etc., etc. What has Mitt Romney done? What is the behavioral evidence that tells us who this man is? Erased hard-drives from MA state government and Salt Lake City Olympics, and refusal to release his tax returns point to someone who will not be upfront and honest with the American people. Shifting and increasingly restrictive positions on healthcare, abortion, and reproductive rights make it abundantly clear that he does not support the needs of women and families. Tax policies, while Governor of MA, that favored only a small sliver of the population while hitting middle class families with enormous fee increases. Inability to work with others (my way or the highway), evidenced by 800 vetoes, of which 717 were overridden. Insulting our biggest ally during what was supposed to be an easy overseas trip. Again, I could go on forever, but each of these is a small sliver of behavioral evidence that prove that Mitt Romney is patently unfit for the job. That President Obama’s behavior clearly demonstrates the diametric opposite should be self-evident to anyone with a brain. So, where you can, encourage your undecided friends, Romney-supporting relatives, and wobbly Obama voters to examine each man’s behavior – what he has actually done – before casting their ballots. Promises mean nothing; actions are everything. The only conclusion of a thinking and observant person must be to vote Obama. If only we had more of those in the US of A.