Yet another reason Donald Trump is bad news: He’s utterly lacking in “integrative complexity” — and that’s dangerous

Last January, the former leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, eerily declared that “it looks like the world is preparing for war.” In fact, many notable commentators agree with this dismal assessment, including some who see the Syrian civil war as the beginning of World War III.

Perhaps buttressing this view, President Donald Trump recently decided to arm the Syrian Kurds, a move that will likely inflame relations with the increasingly less democratic state of Turkey, which is a key ally in the fight against the Islamic State. Meanwhile, U.S.-Russian relations “may be at an all-time low” according to Trump himself, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has repeatedly affirmed that “all options [are] on the table” with respect to the rogue state of North Korea, an avid experimenter with nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

The world situation is rife with risk potential, and its immense complexity requires cool heads capable of careful reflection on both the ethical and strategic implications of different foreign policy options. Unfortunately, it would take the most ideologically blinded individual to maintain that Trump is the right guy for the job, given his ignominious record of outbursts, rejecting expertise and making demonstrably false statements.

But the situation is worse than this, and there’s hard data to back it up. Consider a phenomenon identified by the psychologist Philip Tetlock called “integrative complexity,” which “captures a sense of intellectual balance, nuance, and sophistication.” Individuals with low integrative complexity preferentially use strong language that divides the world into black and white; words like “absolutely,” “definitely” and “indisputably” are common in low-complexity political speeches. Slightly higher complexity is associated with hedging terms like “usually” and “almost,” and still higher complexity involves acknowledging multiple points of view as well as “connections, tradeoffs, or compromises between” these views. The very highest level of integrative complexity is marked by the use of abstract principles to elucidate and navigate the relationships between different perspectives, as when one adopts a particular view because it comports with Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, or the utilitarian maxim that one should always act so as to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering in the world.