by  Rafi Letzter

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are set to face off tonight in
the third and final presidential debate of the 2016 election.

In August, The New York Times
reported that Clinton’s campaign brought in psychology
experts to help her prepare for her first debate with Donald
Trump — which is weird, because that’s not really what
psychologists do.

Here is the relevant part of The Times’ article (emphasis mine):

“Hillary Clinton’s advisers are … seeking insights about Mr.
Trump’s deepest insecurities as they devise strategies to
needle and undermine him … at the first
presidential debate … Her team is also getting advice from
psychology experts to help create a personality
profile of Mr. Trump to gauge how he may respond to
attacks and deal with a woman as his sole adversary on the debate
stage. They are undertaking a forensic-style
analysis of Mr. Trump’s performances in the Republican
primary debates, cataloging strengths and weaknesses as well as
trigger points that caused him to lash out in
less-than-presidential ways.”

There’s not a tremendous amount of information here, but
it’s enough to work from if we want to find research relevant to
the work these psychologists (or “psychology experts”) are
reportedly doing. The strange part is that there isn’t much to
find.

Psychology has long been interested in the nature and structure
of personality. But as for studies of “trigger points,”
strategies for needling and undermining people, or systems for
predicting how a man with a misogynistic past might betray his
true feelings in the future — there isn’t much to be found.

David Silber, a professor emeritus of psychology at George
Washington University, told Business Insider that while he
considers Trump a “narcissist,” he’s not aware of any particular
science that might help Clinton take advantage of any personality
disorder the Republican candidate could have.

(The American Psychiatric Association has a rule, known as
“the
Goldwater rule,” that prohibits psychiatrists from offering
any diagnoses or opinions about the mental health of public
figures whom they have not personally examined. I have not asked
any researchers — psychologists in this case, not psychiatrists —
to break it. All three whom I spoke to for this story used the
word “narcissist” unprompted.)

Another researcher, Scott Lilienfeld, who studies and teaches the
psychology of personality at Emory University, told Business
Insider he also could not point to any particular advice
psychologists could offer Clinton in taking on Trump beyond what
he called “the obvious thing.”

“If you have somebody who’s narcissistic, you want to threaten
their ego,” he said. “But I guess you and my grandmother probably
knew that, right? You find out what they’re insecure about and
you hound them on that. You go for the person’s weakness.”

Brent Roberts, who studies and teaches personality psychology at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, broadly agreed —
though he suggested some clinicians might have enough
less-than-empirical clinical experience with narcissists to offer
more specific suggestions.

Lilienfeld was less optimistic that there might be a cohort out
there with the skills to dismantle Trump.

“If they did, I would have thought that they’d have been able to
stop Donald Trump by now,” Lilienfeld said.

He said it’s worrying to hear that psychologists might be
consulting the Clinton campaign.

“I say this without knowing what these experts are saying — it’s
possible they’re working some magic I’m not aware of,” he said.
“But I worry a little bit about psychologists overclaiming
expertise as though there’s some well-established body of
psychological science that says, ‘Oh, you should really do X as a
candidate.’ I’m just not aware of any along those lines.”

If I can talk to you, why wouldn’t I be able to talk to a
presidential candidate?

If politics were within the domain of psychology, he said,
there’d have to be controlled trials and peer-reviewed studies
before anyone was qualified to offer advice. Those people would
have to show that Trump voters or independents presented with a
particular kind of message were significantly more likely to vote
for Clinton three months later.

As for research into how to induce bad behavior on a debate
stage? Both Roberts and Lilienfeld offered that it might be
difficult to get an institutional ethical review board to approve
that kind of work.

Lilienfeld also said that he thinks there are dangers to
psychologists consulting with politicians.

“I think our job as psychologists is to better inform and educate
the public, and I think there’s a real danger in allowing
ourselves to get too entangled in politics,” he said. “I think it
can tarnish the reputation of psychologists.”

Roberts was less concerned.

“If I can talk to you, why wouldn’t I be able to talk to a
presidential candidate?” he said.

He said there are no specific ethical guidelines to prevent
psychologists from offering bad advice, and that psychological
consultants do so all the time — noting the example of
personality questionnaires offered to businesses to help evaluate
their employees.

That said, he allowed that there are “questions” about the
validity of any claims purported to emerge from empirical
findings about how Trump might behave.

Lilienfeld said he wishes psychologists would just stay out of
it.

“I would prefer psychologists better help the public to evaluate
information, and become better critical thinkers, and learn how
to become more resistant to misleading, false persuasion on the
part of political candidates. That, I think, would be a much
better use of psychologists’ time.”

Clinton’s campaign did not return a request for comment.