As Americans brace for the next presidential campaign — already underway and showing on a screen near you — press pundits are worried about the news media’s readiness for the challenge ahead.

Will reporters follow the same assumptions that made the outcome in 2016 such a shock? Can pollsters reassure a public that has soured on the power of political forecasting?

To answer those questions, I turned to a cohort accustomed to diagnosing human foibles: scholars who have expertise in psychology. After all, journalists are basically a bunch of neurotics. And with the 2020 race looming, maybe we could all use some time on the couch.

“All of us who thought it was inevitable that Trump would lose ignored warning signs that we were wrong,” said Susan Fiske, a professor of social psychology at Princeton.