Breaking through the ‘wall of complexity’ in a politically themed microworld: a challenge for elected officials and the general public

Political leaders are often regarded as the most qualified individuals to address modern societal challenges, owing to the knowledge they acquire through their experience in dealing with complex issues, governance and management, and working towards making impactful decisions. To understand the influence of prior knowledge on decision-making, we conducted a comparative analysis of complex decision-making performance in a politically themed computer-simulated microworld involving incumbent elected officials and a general population sample, each contrasted with a random-response baseline produced with randomly generated decisions. Participants were tasked to govern a country for re-election while maintaining financial stability. The pattern of results suggests that decision-making faces a ‘wall of complexity’ whether one is an elected official or a citizen. Although elected officials generally reported having greater political knowledge, their performance was still relatively poor. The elected officials and general population subgroups performed at the same level and only slightly better than chance. Addressing the societal challenges of our time requires elected officials to possess more than domain-specific prior knowledge.