The attached video is interesting in its entirety, but my comment is understandable, for the most part, viewing only the first 10 minutes.
The speaker Chase starts a good analysis of congressman George Santos who we have mentioned before and is known as a serial liar. Around the 71/2 min mark, he speaks about Santos “hiding shame” and he asked us to remember that for the rest of the talk.
The speaker Scott in the upper right-hand corner then gives us somewhat of a counterargument that Santos is enjoying what he’s doing. This is an error we make.
For sure there can be a momentary secondary gain of joy coming from being successful in one’s lying maneuvers.
The ultimate question is what is the ultimate motivation? I think it goes this way: a life situation produced shame in the liar. The liar does not want to feel more shame, so they then try to avoid more shame through lying. When the lie works, they can feel joy. That joy can later turn to more shame via guilt for lying.
Scott is making this too much of a conscious act on the part of Santos. These are automatic scripts and automatic responses.
We may all have noticed, and if you haven’t you can watch for this in people you know. I call them verbal jujitsu artists. They are so defended against being hurt or being wrong or found out that they develop a fantastic type of intelligence that allows them to have an immediate comeback that redirects. I suspect this starts in early childhood when the child is in a competitive or constantly shaming environment where they develop deep defenses that are exemplified partly in the ability to verbally respond quickly.
It is a certain type of amazing intelligence that they come back immediately with some statement that avoids your question and it throws you off balance.
At around 19 minutes Chase gives a diagnosis of a malignant narcissist.
I wish he would have stayed with “hiding shame”. To me, he’s not connecting the dots but hopefully, he’s on the right track.
I can tell you one thing, these four guys are observant. I am nowhere near as good as they on picking up on these details.
Even on several viewings of the clips I don’t see what they see.
Keep in mind that these are experts in behavior and not necessarily motivation.
They are never saying they “know” the person is lying only that this or that behavior is highly suggestive of lying or not lying.