An Investigative Report by Granite State Report
1. Introduction: When GDP Becomes a Mirror for the Presidency
For decades, Americans have believed that a president’s character — their morality, intelligence, and leadership — defines their fitness for office. But new research challenges that intuition. It suggests that what voters think about a president’s character may be driven not by personal virtue or leadership style, but by something much colder: the economy.
In “Economic Performance and Presidential Trait Evaluations” (Argyle et al., 2016), political scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found that voters’ perceptions of presidents’ intelligence, morality, empathy, and leadership rise and fall with the state of the economy — whether they realize it or not .
When the economy improves, voters start believing the president is a “good person” — smart, moral, and caring. When the economy declines, even loyal partisans begin to doubt their leader’s decency. This phenomenon isn’t merely about approval ratings; it’s about the psychological machinery that underlies democracy.
As Eric Smith, the study’s co-author, noted, “people attribute strong economic performance to proficient presidential decision-making.” That attribution — fair or not — can turn an ordinary politician into a moral hero or a villain overnight.
2. The Psychological Shortcut: The Economy as a Proxy for Character
Voters, like all humans, are cognitive misers — they rely on shortcuts, or heuristics, to make complex judgments with limited information. This isn’t laziness; it’s evolutionary efficiency. When assessing a president, the average voter doesn’t read Federal Reserve minutes or dissect fiscal policy. Instead, they rely on a powerful proxy: “Am I better off than I was a year ago?”
This heuristic was famously encapsulated by Ronald Reagan in his 1980 debate with Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” That question became one of the most potent political triggers in modern history — precisely because it taps into emotional logic, not analytical reasoning.
The UCSB team’s analysis, using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) spanning 1984–2008, reveals that voters transform economic trends into moral narratives. Growth equals virtue; decline equals failure of character. Even traits like compassion and honesty — ostensibly unrelated to GDP or unemployment — are filtered through economic sentiment .
In short, Americans moralize the macroeconomy.
3. How They Proved It: Data Across Five Presidents and 25 Years
Between 1984 and 2008, the ANES surveyed tens of thousands of Americans about five key presidential traits:
- Intelligence
- Morality
- Leadership
- Knowledge
- Empathy (Caring about people like you)
Respondents rated each trait on a four-point scale, from “Not well at all” to “Extremely well.” Argyle and colleagues matched these responses against both objective and subjective economic indicators:
- Objective data: GDP growth, inflation (CPI), unemployment, personal income, and Barro’s Misery Index.
- Subjective data: Voters’ own perceptions of whether the economy had improved or worsened over the past year or was expected to in the coming year.
Using ordered logistic regression — a statistical technique for ordinal data — the researchers found that economic improvements significantly increased favorable evaluations of presidential traits across all categories, even when controlling for partisanship, gender, education, and income .
The effects weren’t marginal. When the economy improved:
- The probability of voters describing the president as “intelligent” jumped sharply.
- Favorable assessments of morality and caring also rose — even among members of the opposing party.
Conversely, when unemployment or inflation rose, those same presidents were suddenly seen as less moral, less competent, and less caring.
This suggests a psychological halo (or “horn”) effect — where success or failure in one domain colors perceptions in another.
4. The Halo Effect in Political Psychology
Psychologists have long documented the halo effect: when people judge one positive trait, they unconsciously project others. In politics, that halo can be blinding.
When the economy booms, the president looks smarter, kinder, and more trustworthy — regardless of their actual behavior. When the economy sours, that halo reverses into a shadow.
The Argyle study confirmed that this pattern holds even for traits with no logical connection to economic stewardship. A president presiding over strong GDP growth was rated as more moral and empathetic — traits linked to ethics and compassion, not economic acumen .
That means public moral judgments are often tethered not to ethical performance, but to economic weather. The line between competence and virtue blurs.
5. The Numbers Don’t Lie — But Voters Might
On page 5 of the study, the authors present Table 1, summarizing their regression models. The findings are stark:
- GDP growth positively correlates with higher ratings on intelligence and morality.
- Unemployment and the Misery Index (a composite of inflation and unemployment) have significant negative effects on all five traits.
- Even at the state level, higher personal income growth corresponds with better assessments of presidential character.
Meanwhile, education had an inverse effect — more educated respondents were less likely to rate presidents highly on any trait. The authors interpret this as a form of skepticism: educated voters may resist the emotional contagion of economic optimism .
This means political psychology operates differently across educational strata. Working-class and middle-income voters respond more directly to economic signals, while educated elites tend to compartmentalize.
6. Beyond Approval: The Moralization of Prosperity
The study’s conclusion is damning for those who believe democracy rewards moral leadership. It reveals that prosperity itself creates the illusion of morality.
Consider the George W. Bush presidency: during early 2001–2002, with post–9/11 unity and moderate economic stability, Bush’s “moral” and “leadership” ratings soared. But by 2008, amid financial collapse and the Iraq quagmire, even Republicans rated him as less moral and less caring .
The data suggests the moral halo evaporated not because Bush changed, but because the economy did.
This cognitive reflex — fusing moral worth with material wellbeing — may be a remnant of older cultural logic: the Protestant work ethic. In that worldview, prosperity is a sign of divine favor; poverty, a mark of moral failure. American political culture, steeped in that theology, still unconsciously applies it to presidents.
7. The Perception Gap: Subjective vs. Objective Economics
One of the study’s most revealing findings is that subjective perceptions of the economy have an even stronger effect than objective indicators. In other words, how people feel about the economy matters more than what’s actually happening.
The researchers used data from the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumer Attitudes, specifically two indices:
- NBI (National Business Index): retrospective perceptions of the economy.
- EFI (Economic Fortunes Index): prospective outlook.
Both indices predicted trait evaluations with striking consistency. When people thought the economy was improving — regardless of the real GDP data — they attributed more positive personal qualities to the president .
This insight explains modern political paradoxes: presidents can preside over genuine economic growth yet face public scorn if people feel uneasy (as in 2012 or 2022). Conversely, they can enjoy high moral esteem during unsustainable booms.
It’s not the economy, stupid — it’s the perception of it.
8. The Role of Partisanship: Not as Strong as You Think
One might assume that partisanship dominates every political judgment — and in many contexts, it does. But the Argyle study found that even after accounting for party ID, economic conditions independently shaped perceptions of presidential traits.
That means Democrats and Republicans alike adjust their moral lens based on shared economic experience. When GDP rises, even opposition partisans become slightly more charitable; when it falls, co-partisans grow more critical .
The figure on page 8 (see Fig. 1 of the paper) illustrates this vividly: lines representing opposing-party voters converge upward during economic expansion, showing that prosperity softens ideological hostility. In downturns, those lines diverge sharply.
Economic optimism, then, doesn’t just improve approval ratings — it temporarily narrows the partisan divide.
9. From Reagan to Obama: A Historical Pattern
The 1984–2008 timeline spans five presidencies: Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama’s first election cycle. Across these transitions, the data maps cleanly onto macroeconomic trends.
- Reagan (1984): Massive GDP growth and declining inflation produced high ratings for intelligence and leadership.
- Bush Sr. (1992): Recession and rising unemployment led to moral and competence downgrades — helping Bill Clinton win on the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid.”
- Clinton (1996–2000): Tech-driven prosperity elevated perceptions of empathy and morality, despite personal scandals.
- Bush Jr. (2004–2008): Declining economic optimism and war fatigue eroded moral credibility even before the financial crash.
Each cycle reinforced the same truth: presidential “character” is a reflection of economic mood, not moral reality .
10. The New Frontier: How Media Amplifies the Economic Halo
In the digital era, economic perception is increasingly shaped by media narrative rather than personal experience. Cable news, social media, and algorithmic feeds amplify selective interpretations of economic data — converting mild fluctuations into moral drama.
A president announcing “strong job growth” may be factually correct, but if voters’ feeds are filled with inflation anxiety or viral stories of hardship, the psychological signal turns negative.
11. Implications: Democracy’s Empathy Problem
If citizens reward or punish presidents based on perceived prosperity rather than policy or principle, then democracy may be more emotional than deliberative. This finding aligns with broader concerns in political psychology about motivated reasoning — our tendency to rationalize feelings as facts.
The moral danger is clear: a competent but unlucky president in a recession can be painted as corrupt or unfeeling, while a reckless leader in a boom can bask in unearned moral glory.
This has implications for accountability, journalism, and even civic education. It means media outlets must contextualize economic trends without moral coloration — a nearly impossible task in a partisan environment.
12. Why This Matters in 2025
Today, as inflation stabilizes and unemployment remains low, President Biden (or his successor) faces the same paradox identified in this 2016 study: objective recovery, subjective pessimism.
Surveys in 2025 show that a majority of Americans still believe the economy is “in poor shape,” even amid robust job growth. This mirrors Argyle’s core finding: perception trumps performance.
In an age of polarization and algorithmic disinformation, this perception gap can destabilize governance itself. Presidents are no longer just economic managers — they’re emotional proxies for the national mood.
13. The Philosophical Core: Prosperity as a Moral Illusion
The ancient Greeks warned of tyche — fortune — as a deceptive goddess. In modern democracies, the economy has become our tyche, bestowing moral legitimacy on leaders who please her and withdrawing it from those who displease her.
The UCSB study unintentionally reveals a kind of civic fatalism: that even in a rational democracy, citizens remain beholden to fortune’s sway. Our sense of virtue, justice, and leadership bends to GDP graphs.
If voters are, as Samuel Popkin once put it, “reasoning with shortcuts,” then the economy has become the master shortcut — a proxy for goodness itself .
This insight should unsettle anyone who believes character and competence can be judged independently of circumstance.
14. Future Research: Toward a More Rational Democracy
Argyle and her colleagues call for deeper research into when and how the public sees economic performance as a moral obligation of presidents . Future studies could:
- Examine whether this dynamic holds in the post-Trump era, where moral judgments are hyperpolarized.
- Test the role of media framing — do economic headlines trigger emotional shifts similar to real economic changes?
- Explore international parallels — do European or Asian democracies moralize economic performance in the same way?
In an age when algorithms shape emotion, understanding this feedback loop between economy and empathy is vital for the survival of informed democracy.
15. Conclusion: The Presidency as a Barometer of Feeling
The UCSB team’s work reframes how we understand presidential politics. The president is not merely judged on policy outcomes but on how those outcomes feel to the public. Economic performance becomes moral narrative; prosperity becomes virtue.
The lesson is both humbling and hopeful. It means that leaders must manage not only the economy but also the perception of fairness. It also means that journalists — including us at Granite State Report — bear a civic duty to separate empirical economics from moral storytelling.
Because in the end, the economy doesn’t just shape the nation’s fortunes. It shapes the nation’s soul.
References
- Argyle, L.P., Arrajj, M., Covich, S., Garay, E.G., Gottlieb, J., Hodges, H.E., & Smith, E.R.A.N. (2016). Economic Performance and Presidential Trait Evaluations: A Longitudinal Analysis. Electoral Studies, 43, 52–62. Elsevier DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2016.04.002
- Pew Research Center (2012). For Voters, It’s Still the Economy. Link
- Popkin, S. (1991). The Reasoning Voter. University of Chicago Press.
- Fiorina, M. (1981). Retrospective Voting in American Elections. Yale University Press.
- Lewis-Beck, M., & Stegmaier, M. (2000). Economic Determinants of Electoral Outcomes. Annual Review of Political Science, 3, 189–219.
- Holian, D.B., & Prysby, C.L. (2015). Candidate Character Traits in Presidential Elections. Routledge.
