Throw your mind back a little over a dozen years. The Iowa caucuses of 2008 featured a spirited contest for the Democratic presidential nomination among three major candidates. Two of them had been arguing for months over how to fix the doughnut hole in Medicare Part D. One other candidate had been offering a message of "hope and change."

We now know how the latter appeal yielded a come-from-behind win for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. And, that latter appeal was rooted in well-established behavioral science, based on research that I conducted with two colleagues. When people are contemplating decisions and choices in the distant future, go abstract. When decisions are imminent, go concrete. This prescription is based on the well-established psychological principle of "temporal construal."

Elizabeth Warren's departure from the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination race was a predictable outcome predicated on temporal construal theory. In mid-2019, Sen. Warren announced a series of plans on issues ranging from taxes to health care. They were detailed, thoughtful and, most important, concrete. And therein lies the rub. As good as the plans might have been as governing principles, the strategy did not account for the voters' mind-sets. Several months from the Iowa caucuses, the median voter would more likely have been moved by abstract appeals. Voters were less likely to attend to concrete, specific, granular information that provided detailed plans for fixing what ails the nation.

Why is this the case? Consider a simple thought experiment. Imagine you are going to Cancun for spring break next year. What are you thinking about? Probably sunsets, drinks with umbrellas in them, and the sound of waves lapping along the beach on the Mexican Riviera. Now, imagine you are going to Cancun tomorrow. What are you thinking about? Tickets, passports, taxis. What's the difference in your mind-set? In the first case, you were thinking abstractly. In the latter case, you were thinking much more concretely. So, if you are thinking abstractly about sunsets and warm beaches — which is how you would think about an event that is not imminent — and you received an advertisement that featured concrete information about a taxi company offering you a discounted ride, you would not be particularly receptive to it. Who cares? Leave me alone — let me think about sunny beaches! Conversely, if you were thinking concretely about passports and taxis, because you are leaving for Cancun tomorrow, and you received a message featuring a taxi company offering you a discounted ride, you would pay attention. The message needs to fit the recipient's mind-set in a temporally consistent manner. When decisions are temporally distant, abstract messages work best.

This is where Warren's series of "plans" failed the message consistency test in this election cycle. It didn't register. The "plan" approach was much too concrete, and while it likely appealed to the media and to pundits, the median voter was more likely to respond to an abstract, lofty appeal that resonated emotionally, rather than a concrete set of proposals that emphasized "competence." Managerial competence, governing ability, and the like, are not rousing political slogans. Just ask President Dukakis. Or President Bloomberg.

Akshay R. Rao holds the General Mills Chair in Marketing at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. He is at arao@umn.edu.