Exploring how to improve experimenter training in experimental psychopathology: Lessons from and for the trauma film paradigm

Experimental psychopathology (EPP) historically relied on extensive experimenter training, but this has dwindled in recent years. Insufficient training may lead to increased ‘experimenter noise’ and ‘protocol drift’, potentially hindering the fidelity and replicability of EPP research. This may ultimately impact translation of findings from the laboratory to the clinic, decelerating the development of novel psychological interventions. In an effort to address this, we made a first attempt to develop experimenter training guidance for EPP researchers, using the example of the trauma film paradigm (TFP). In a pragmatic review of articles on methodological guidance for laboratory-based EPP paradigms, we identified only seven articles, just one of which provided an explicit framework for experimenter training. Incorporating insights from the reviewed articles, together with approaches employed in adjacent clinical trials, we suggest a possible framework for experimenter training in EPP. The framework includes overarching principles of experimenter training, steps in a training process, an approach to evaluating training outcomes, and offers examples from the TFP. Further work is needed, and future directions include incentivizing, improving, disseminating and experimentally testing guidance for experimenter training in EPP. Critically, as we have seen in previous decades, this may even ultimately aid the turbulent translational pipeline of new techniques from the laboratory to evidence-based psychological therapies grounded in scientific principles.