Recently I asked PT's bloggers what test they would want to give the presidential candidates. IQ? Rorschach? Maybe a turn on Survivor? A few of their responses were printed in the magazine. Here's a more complete (though not comprehensive) roundup:Daddy Issues
I'd like to see how they deal with their own two-year-old having a meltdown in a public place.
—Hara Estroff Marano (Nation of Wimps) is Editor at Large at Psychology Today.
Straight Talk Express
My challenge would be for them to sit down with Jon Stewart for a two-hour live interview and a two-hour follow-up. Sadly, none of the other news anchors seems to be as interested in getting rid of BS answers and facing up to the chaos our country is in internationally and economically. I think it would really show the depth of their understanding of a wide range of issues (and where they are ignorant) and give us a better appreciation of their positions, their differences, their ability to think under pressure, and their stamina. And it would be fun! The two-hour followup would allow misleading statements to be thoroughly debunked-facing up to false claims and facts is often something handled only through sound bites.
—Joe Dumit (Promiscuous Facts) is an anthropologist at UC Davis.
Truth or Dare
Assuming both candidates stick to the rules, I would like to see them play "Truth or Dare" with each other. Actually, we've been watching them play variations of this game over the past several months, as this "game" is a central discourse in all election campaigns. But if there are formal rules and the candidates are face-to-face for the game, the best part would be that each candidate gets to choose which questions to ask and which dares to assign to the other candidate.
—Ilan Shrira (The Narcissus in All of Us) is a social psychologist at the University of Florida.
King of Cloud Nine
Let's administer a happiness inventory. Happy people are more productive, creative, charitable, energetic, friendly, and healthy. They set higher goals, cope better with challenges, and suffer burnout less. Of course Lincoln was depressed and Bush appears staunchly optimistic, but happiness plus realism helps you realize your dreams.
—Sonja Lyubomirsky (How of Happiness) is a social psychologist at UC Riverside.
Hear No Evil
I'd want the candidates to take the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE). This scale measures people's sensitivity to being evaluated negatively by others. On average, Americans tend to be low in FNE, while members of East Asian cultures tend to be high in FNE. High FNE is also correlated with people's willingness to seek compromise solutions to hard dilemmas rather than sticking to one horn of the dilemma or the other.
—Art Markman (Ulterior Motives) is a cognitive psychologist at the University of Texas.
McRage
McCain is known to have a temper, and Obama is said to be good at forging peaceable compromise solutions, so we might want to know how each deals with frustration. A Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Funkenstein, was famous for his "stress interviews," conducted from the 1950s into the 1970s. Funkenstein might calmly ask a candidate for medical school to open the window - one that had been nailed shut. These challenges were formalized, for example, in a test situation in which undergraduates were given hard math puzzles to solve. Told that the problems were easy, the subjects were hurried and interrupted, by having their blood pressure taken repeatedly. After fifteen minutes of this treatment, the subjects were interviewed and rated on such dimensions as "intropunitiveness" and "extrapunitiveness." Which sort of President we should choose-intro- or extrapunitive-is up to the voters. But it would be nice to know how the candidates respond to provocation.
—Peter D. Kramer (In Practice) is a psychiatrist and author.
Gear Switch
From my perspective one of the most important qualities of a leader is to realize when they are wrong and change path accordingly. With this in mind I would like to ask or potential leaders to solve a series of five similar-looking problems. But in fact I would set the first four problems to be very similar but have the last one be very different. What I would like to see is how long they keep on trying to apply the approach from the first set of problems to the fifth one, and when they give up on the old approach and look for a new one. This test will also give us a measure of creativity and problem solving, which is not bad either.
—Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational) is a behavioral scientist at MIT.
Memories
I would like to ask each candidate to supply their most important "self-defining memory" (a memory that is vivid and emotional and helps to explain how they have come to be the person that they are). I would then ask them how this memory might reflect the kinds of concerns and issues that they would highlight in their presidency. For example, if McCain chooses his POW experience, how might that influence his approach to national security? If Obama chooses an experience related to his bi-racial upbringing, how might that affect how he approaches issues of race and social justice?
—Jefferson Singer (Life Scripts) is a psychologist at Connecticut College.
Heart of Darkness
I'd administer Henry Murray's Thematic Apperception Test. I want to know about the candidates' unconscious fantasies, and that's what the TAT elicits. It's a series of card drawings depicting people in emotionally fraught situations onto which the subject unknowingly projects his own needs and fears. Thus, it's perfect for getting at the darker strata of the mind. I want to know about the two of them what they don't even know about themselves.
—William Todd Schultz (Genius and Madness) is a psychologist at Pacific University.
Heart to Heart
The test I'd like to see the presidential candidates take is the MSCEIT, which is a test of Emotional Intelligence. Research has shown that emotions are central to good decision-making. Also, EI is thought to predict interpersonal and communication skills. We need a president with high "EQ" to help rebuild America's reputation around the world.
—Daisy Grewal (Sexual Stereotypes) is a social psychologist at Stanford Hospital.
Real Tests
The most relevant psychological question for a president is how he or she would react in a crisis, military or political, with lives at risk (think Lincoln and secession, or Kennedy and Cuban missiles). There is no good psychological test for such fitness, though I might suggest a poor substitute: Has the candidate failed at anything major in real life? If so, how did he react? Lincoln pulled himself up from the throes of suicide; Kennedy had PT109. In contrast, George W. Bush was untested by adversity before his election (unless we allow for recovery from alcoholism via evangelical religion, a dubious solution).
—Nassir Ghaemi (Mood Swings) is a psychiatrist at Tufts Medical Center.
Family Guy
Here's one I call the "family drawing". The candidates and their immediate family (spouses and children) are asked in front of a large piece of newsprint paper to pick a marker and "do something with the marker and the paper together without talking". They have five minutes to draw. No other instructions are given. Over the years I have found the exercise to be extremely revealing of family dynamics and process. Parents often learn alot from the exercise. We would learn what kind of family guys these candidates really are-if that matters to anyone.
—Larry Diller (The Last Normal Child) is a behavioral/developmental pediatrician.
Red Alert
I feel it is critical to observe leaders responding to circumstances that are rife with ambiguity. Most leaders-particularly politicians-have every nuance of their existence controlled for them by handlers. If invited to provide an in-depth interview with an editor from Psychology Today, a leader could be situated in a conference room and subsequently -after a ruse that called the editor from the room-be forced to cope with an alarm that would be sounded by an experimental stooge. Adding to the ambiguity of the situation, the telephone in the room would be disconnected and the door would be locked after the editor exited. Optimal leaders would stay cool, seek alternative modes of escape, and have low levels of panic.
—Steven Berglas (The Business Coach) is a management consultant.
Signs of Resentment
I would give both candidates a resentment test we use to measure progress in our boot camps for couples. Resentment creates a sense of entitlement, self-righteousness, reactivity, negative bias in judgment, pettiness, victim identity, enmity, and revenge motives. As bad as these are in relationships, they are disasters in leaders.
—Steven Stosny (Anger in the Age of Entitlement) is a psychologist and author.
Smartypants
My politically incorrect proposal would be to administer an IQ test to any candidate who aspires to occupy the Oval Office. Given that one of the most consistent findings in psychology is the robust association between IQ and job performance - with the association being highest for more complex jobs - it's always surprised me that discussions of intelligence are largely off limits when considering candidates' presidential qualifications.
—Scott O. Lilienfeld (The Skeptical Psychologist) is a psychologist at Emory University.
Open Wide
I would most like to administer a measure of openness to experience to the two presidential candidates. In particular, I would want to assess the candidates' imaginative capacities to consider various possible scenarios, openness to their inner feelings and the emotions of others, openness to new actions not normally considered, intellectual curiosity, and a readiness to re-examine their own values if is for the good of the country. Such flexibility and willingness to adapt to new situations will become increasingly important in our constantly changing world full of ambiguity and turmoil.
—Scott Barry Kaufman (Beautiful Minds) researches cognitive psychology at Yale.
Patterns of Behavior
I would ask them to describe the most difficult challenges they have faced as a leader and how they responded to them. And I would listen very carefully. If we know anything about psychology, it is that past behavior predicts future behavior.
—Christopher Peterson (The Good Life) is a psychologist at the University of Michigan.
No Muss, No Fuss
I'd like to sit at a plastic-covered table with each candidate and finger paint, like I do with my smallest child patients. Finger painting with adults is fascinating, because it offers an almost irresistible invitation to regression. Healthy adults give in and enjoy a little goopiness before they pull back into the confines of socialized thinking. What would McCain do? Would he let loose and smear his paper, and then his face? Would Obama unbutton enough to get his hands dirty? Probably not. If I were betting, I'd bet they would each draw a nice neat square or triangle and then say, "Can I stop now?" No regression, no muss, no fuss... no fun, no openness, no giving anything away. I'm so glad I'm not running for President.
—David Anderegg (Young Americans) is a child therapist.
Shell Shock
With Obama, the primary issue we'd want to investigate would be the importance of his absent father in his political ambition. But these sorts of issues are not amenable to diagnosis with a single test. With McCain we'd be most interested in understanding how the sequelae of his imprisonment and torture in Vietnam have affected his thinking. So, we'd like to administer the CAPS (Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale). We find it incredible that the public has the perceived right to view the financial records of the candidates but not to know their psychiatric status-especially when the candidate in question is virtually certain to suffer from the effects of PTSD.
—Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jethá (Lust in Paradise) are a psychologist and psychiatrist.
Being Mindful
I'd have both candidates do some equine therapy. Just one example is the equine therapist instructs a group of people to clean out a horse's hoof: to lift the horse's leg and clean out the hoof with a trowel. The therapist points out that the horse will only cooperate if you are 100% present with the horse. The challenge is to not focus on others and what they are thinking about you and to not go to the past or future as you work with the horse. We don't want a president trapped by his own ego. We want a guy who is mindful and present when he gets that infamous 3 AM phone call.
—Mark Sichel (The Therapist Is In) is a psychotherapist.
Think About It
Let's assess their need for cognition: the extent to which they enjoy and typically engage in effortful cognitive activity. Individuals high in NC like thinking in depth about a wide range of issues, relish the opportunity to learn about new ideas, and tend to persevere when presented with difficult challenges that require new ways of thinking. Believe it or not, electorates in many other nations would consider these important characteristics in a potential leader...
—Sam Sommers (Science of Small Talk) is a social psychologist at Tufts University.
The Elephant in the Room
My fantasy art therapy session with the two Presidential candidates involves two creative drawing tasks: 1) draw an image of an historical figure, living or dead, who is most like you (no self-portraits, please) and tell me a story about that individual; and 2) draw a picture of the elephant (obvious, but often ignored problem facing this country) in the Oval Office.
—Cathy Malchiodi (The Healing Arts) is an art therapist.
Ball Overboard!
I would ask the candidates: "Assume you have oared to the middle of a lake and dropped a ball overboard. How much time will it take for it to reach the bottom?" The criteria are the number of appropriate questions that the person asks, which will tell you several things such as how much a person seeks out and listens to qualified advice and the deliberation for alternative solutions that he or she makes in the decision-making judgment.
—Frank Lawlis (Redefining Stress) is the principal advisor on the Dr. Phil Show.
Crumbling Under Pressure
I would administer the "Hogan Development Survey" because it identifies potential "derailers" and risk factors. Candidates accentuate their own strengths, and attack their opponent's weaknesses, but it would be very helpful to get a more "objective" view of how the respective candidates personalities might entail risks in the role of president.
—Ben Dattner (Minds at Work) is an organizational psychologist at NYU.
Deep Analysis
When making decisions under risk and uncertainty, analytical thinkers have different tendencies than intuitive thinkers in regard to taking the safe versus risky route in various situations. Thus, I would like to see our presidential candidates take the simple 3-question Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) to determine what thinking mode they use. Readers can explore their own level of analytical/intuitive thinking by taking the test at the posting at the Mind on My Money blog.
—John Nofsinger (Mind on My Money) is a professor of finance at Washington State University.


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