WEBVTT - S4: BONUS EP 1 — The Lying Experts 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:14.520 Hi, guys, it's Andrea with a bonus episode this season 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:18.280 on Betrayal, We're telling the story of Caroline Brega. After 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.840 two decades of marriage, she discovered that her entire life 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:26.000 was a mirage. Her husband, Joel, an honorable cop, was 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:29.840 anything but For years, he'd been spending his time on 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:33.080 the clock having sex in his police car. On top 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:37.839 of that, he'd had dozens of affairs for Caroline. This 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:41.280 betrayal was not just about what Joel did, It was 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:43.879 about the lengths he went to to cover it all up. 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:47.199 Our marriage has just been lie after lie after. 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:51.720 Lie, day after day. Joel deceived her. He lied about 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:54.880 where he was, who he was with, and what he 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:57.760 was really up to all those long nights on duty, 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:02.120 And even during his investigation by the Colorado Springs Police Department, 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:06.560 when he signed a document guaranteeing honesty, he continued to 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:07.560 hide the truth. 0:01:07.800 --> 0:01:08.640 To me, this is the. 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:11.560 Most disturbing piece of the entire case. The fact that 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:13.640 you like the fact that you're willing to put this 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:17.520 on a third person is absolutely horrific and constitutes a 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:20.120 violation of your owth in office. 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:23.680 While reporting on Caroline's story, our team has been fascinated 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:27.640 by the idea of liars, people who refuse to be 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:30.600 honest even when their back is up against the wall. 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:35.319 We wanted to understand why people lie and how someone 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:39.280 like Joel could have kept lying for so long. So 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:44.160 we track down two of the world's leading experts in deception. 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:51.800 Drew Curtis and my name's Chris Hart. 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:56.720 They're both psychology researchers and professors. Together they wrote a 0:01:56.720 --> 0:02:01.040 book called Big Liars. What Psychological Science tells Us about 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:04.840 Lying and How you can Avoid being duped. They've spent 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:09.000 years studying pathological lying, so I asked them to define 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:09.400 it for me. 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:12.959 Most people are honest most of the time, but it's 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:16.639 a small percentage of the population who tells excessive amounts 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:20.200 of lies. So there's these groups of prolific or big 0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:24.400 liars who tell lots of lies, and those lies don't 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:27.320 always put them at some disadvantage. And then there's a 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:30.600 smaller subset of individuals who would say are pathological liars, 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:35.320 where their lies do disadvantage them, typically in their relationships, 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:37.680 causing them to stress and so forth. 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:43.800 You guys say in your book Big Liars, that lying, 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:47.519 at its core is the attempt to persuade. Can you 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:49.000 tell us a little bit more about what you mean 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:49.359 by that. 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:54.320 Oftentimes our goals and ambitions are in alignment with other people, 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.680 but there's always a certain degree to which that's not true, 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:01.880 and so we're always navigating that tension between satisfying our 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:05.640 own goals and trying to match someone else's goals. But 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:09.919 I think ultimately we all find ourselves bending the truth 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.320 and sometimes outright lying when we feel like that's our 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:17.360 best option at persuading other people to essentially do what 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:17.800 we want. 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:20.480 People are coming to the show because in some ways 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:24.320 they relate to either Caroline story or Ashley or Stacey's 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:27.200 story from past seasons. In a lot of the cases, 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:31.320 they were with someone that deceived them for their own game. 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:35.160 What kind of resources could we give to anybody who's 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:39.680 trying to help someone who cares about the liar? Where 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:42.960 do you start? Where do you go to help advocate 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:45.240 for them to get help? Is there actually a path 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:47.040 forward for these individuals? 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:49.800 What you're saying makes me think of two pieces to this, 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:54.560 and one is how do we overcome deception within our 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:59.160 relationships or betrayals that are coupled with deception. One of 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:02.680 the challenges with exception is that it really damages trust, 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:05.720 and so the restoration of trust is a kind of 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:08.200 at the seat of this. But you're right, there's not 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:11.480 a lot of help. And to make this clear, pathological 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:15.400 lying is not currently recognized as a formal diagnostic entity 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:16.760 in the DSM. 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.120 For those unfamiliar with the term, the DSM is a 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:24.560 manual for mental health professionals. It lays out diagnoses recognized 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:28.360 by the medical establishment, and doctor Curtis is saying the 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:32.839 pathological lying is not something clinicians can formally diagnose. 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:34.800 And so that leaves a lot of people helpless, you know, 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:38.440 who might reach out to me or Chris or experts saying, hey, 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:39.039 can you help me? 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.520 Why do you think that this isn't a formal diagnosis 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:44.640 in the DSM. 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:48.800 It's surprising to me because some of the most prolific 0:04:48.880 --> 0:04:54.279 writers in psychiatry and psychology identified pathological lying and it 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:57.280 comes with different names. And that's one of our hypotheses 0:04:57.320 --> 0:04:59.599 is that maybe it was too fragmented. We called it 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:03.279 all these different things, and maybe it didn't cohesively come together. 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:05.359 The other part of this is a lot of the 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:09.160 research on pathological lying and the case studies were late 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:13.680 eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, but after about nineteen fifteen, 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:17.080 there's really not a lot of writing on it until 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:21.119 maybe the nineteen eighties, so as the DSM was really 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:24.720 being developed in the fifties, you know, it doesn't necessarily 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.160 make its way in there, but I'm hopeful. I've been 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:30.640 working with some colleagues psychiatrists from Yale and Colombia, and 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:32.880 we're working actively to get it recognized. 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:37.880 How would saying curtly this is a diagnosis help the 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:41.799 individual or help other people? Like, why would that be important? 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:45.320 One of the most important reasons is just a standard 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:48.960 label by which we can communicate as professionals but also 0:05:49.000 --> 0:05:52.160 communicate with patients. You know, so you think of any 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:56.040 kind of disorder like major depressive disorder. When we say that, 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:59.919 all clinical professionals understand the cluster of symptoms that come 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:03.080 with that. But then also people who receive that diagnosis, 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:06.680 they can associate that label with the symptoms they already feel. 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:09.600 So it gives a standard language for people to communicate. 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:11.880 That's kind of at the very basic aspect of it. 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:17.839 More pragmatically looking for like insurance reimbursement, so insurance is 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:20.960 not going to reimburse treatment of something that what are 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:23.920 you treating where you're not treating anything that actually exists 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:28.360 or that's formally recognized. Other pragmatic concerns are We did 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:33.479 a study looking at psychotherapists, and the majority of psychotherapists 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:35.920 indicated they had worked with someone who they considered to 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:39.400 be a pathological liar, but in the absence of this label, 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:42.840 they end up giving another diagnosis. And so when you 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:47.279 do that, you're somewhat misdiagnosing and then maybe even arguably 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:51.120 ineffectively offering a treatment. And that's the last piece of 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:56.440 this too, is that if you can identify a formal diagnosis, 0:06:56.839 --> 0:06:59.200 then you can set forth research to look at what 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:00.880 is the most effect of treatment for this. 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:25.360 Where Caroline is left today is that she's kind of 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.800 living with two different realities. There was her perspective of 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:30.880 what her life was and what her family looked like 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:32.640 and what she thought her family looked like, and on 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:35.800 the other track, there's the life that Joel was doing 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:38.880 behind the scenes, and she now has to kind of 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:43.320 integrate those two realities because she has to look back 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:47.720 on major memories and wonder what was real, what wasn't real, 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:51.880 And so when I look at someone like Caroline, or 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:54.720 if I'm Caroline, I don't even know where to start 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:58.200 on rebuilding trust or understanding the world in which I live. 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:03.320 That's why I f this topic fascinating because he lied 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:04.320 to her for twenty years. 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:08.480 Our research shows that most people are really good at lying. 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:11.320 It's a pretty easy thing for most humans to pull off. 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:15.400 And I think we go through the world trusting everyone 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:17.720 as being honest with us, and especially those people who 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:21.320 are close with us. But it's important to remember that 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:24.520 they're probably not being fully honest with us all the time, 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:27.240 even the people who are the very closest people in 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:30.440 our lives. If we catch someone close to us telling 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.360 us a rather minor lie, it has the same effect 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:36.360 as these bigger lies that we're talking about in this case, 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:39.080 where we start to question, well, if they lie about this, 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:40.480 what else are they lying about. 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:43.760 It's a natural proclivity, I believe to go back and 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:46.960 start investigating. And one of the pieces about the advice 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:50.520 I'd say too is to not necessarily let that overcloud 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:54.200 or overshadow places where you did have good experiences. 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:56.319 But it's easier said than done. 0:08:57.080 --> 0:09:00.439 Sure, I think another part of that is really commitment 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:04.080 to where do you want to be now and where 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:06.280 do you want to go forward? And I imagine anyone 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:08.760 who's been lied to for a very long time that 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:14.040 is going back. You know it's going to impact trust 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:17.280 of other relationships or at least you know. The analogy 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:20.319 I use as walls. You know, when you've lowered your 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:24.160 wall and you've been vulnerable and you've gotten crushed, the 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:26.480 walls are going to come up, probably higher than before, 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:28.520 and you're probably going to have a hard time letting 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:31.480 people in because you've seen what people can do to 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:34.480 you and you're developing these new beliefs that if I 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:37.080 let people in, they will crush me, they will lie 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:39.920 to me, they will take advantage of me, and those thoughts, 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:42.800 those are hard to guard against. Right, But you are 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:45.880 making decisions about what it is you want to do, 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:48.320 and maybe you do want to keep the walls up. 0:09:48.720 --> 0:09:50.760 But there's a consequence of that too, and it's not 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:53.400 letting people in who may not do that to. 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:57.760 You, right. I mean, I imagine your brain is helping 0:09:57.800 --> 0:10:00.920 you create that story for a sense of safe because 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:03.960 your world has just kind of been taken away from you. 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:06.520 Or your perception of what your life was like has 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:09.480 been taken away. As much as you want to beat 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:12.480 yourself up, people who lie all the time are very 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:13.720 good at it, you know. 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:16.679 We do see that people who are really practice at 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:18.640 lying get good at it. And one of the things 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:23.120 we see is for people that lie prolifically, they have 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:27.120 this diminished fear response when they're lying. So probably if 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:29.280 any of us were lying, we'd be really nervous about 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:32.120 being caught, you know, because for a lot of reasons, 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:35.599 like it would destroy our reputations and cause ruptures in 0:10:35.640 --> 0:10:38.360 our relationships. But but people who lie a lot and 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:42.840 do it every day, that fear response subsides, and so 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:46.679 they can lie and their emotional reactions are going to 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:48.840 be about the same as if they're telling you what 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:51.560 they had for dinner last night. There's just not much there. 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:54.160 And the other part you mentioned is Blaine, you know, 0:10:54.280 --> 0:10:57.760 you can beat yourself up, Like you said, what did 0:10:57.800 --> 0:10:58.640 I not see? 0:10:58.760 --> 0:10:58.880 Right? 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.960 Hindsight's twenty two? How did I not see all these things? 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:05.280 And maybe you see them much clearer now. You know, 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:09.200 most of us, you know, don't want to catch those 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:11.120 awful things. We don't want to be confronted with that 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:13.640 even if it's true. And so I think you know 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:17.720 that aspect too is helping someone deal with beating themselves 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:21.000 up for not being super light detector. But there is 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:25.680 an initial impulse to not necessarily want to know that 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:28.880 the person's lying because what that brings about or the 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.200 consequences of what they were lying about. 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:34.880 Yeah, and especially within the context of you know, romantic 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:39.040 relationships and marriage, is if I'm going to call my 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:43.200 spouse out for lying, does that mean we have to 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:47.120 split up? And it gets really complicated and scary really quickly, 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:51.120 And it's just so much easier and less frightening to 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:54.720 just turn a blind eye to that thing that's giving 0:11:54.840 --> 0:11:55.840 rise towards suspicion. 0:11:56.880 --> 0:12:01.600 Can people who are pathological liars change? Is there a 0:12:01.720 --> 0:12:04.760 path for them to move about life in a more 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:06.640 honest way if they want to work on it. 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:11.200 I think people always have the opportunities to change, and 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:13.839 change is kind of the business we're in in one 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:17.319 of those really cognitive behavioral therapy. You know, it's aspects 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:21.000 like modeling honesty even when it's hard, So trying to 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:24.600 encourage people to be honest even when it's hard, Really 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:28.839 having those tough conversations, showing that you're willing to have 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:30.400 tough conversations with people. 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:33.120 Yeah, I think a lot of it is just the 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:38.120 intention to change. Lying is really a social strategy that 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:43.520 people adopt and cultivate and reinforce over decades and decades. 0:12:43.520 --> 0:12:46.800 And it's just like any behavioral pattern, whether it's you know, 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:51.920 alcohol consumption, smoking, using sarcasm, anything that you've been doing 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:54.040 for decades. It's hard just to flip the switch and 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:57.360 turn it off. But the key and the first step 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:00.439 in Drew and I both hear from these people periodically, 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:04.280 is people decide they finally want to change. They finally 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:07.400 hit some point in their lives where they realize that 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:12.079 their patterns of laing are causing such upheaval and turmoil 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:15.640 that they really have a strong desire to change. I 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:18.360 think we can all become more honest than we are 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:20.840 right now, but we have to make that a goal, 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:23.199 we have to make a priority. And if we just 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:25.680 take one moment every day and think, how can I 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.760 be more honest about this situation with someone who I 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:31.800 care about that I'm interacting with, we can move that needle, 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:35.520 and each day, as we practice that habit, we start 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:37.840 to see some change, and the change might be gradual. 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:40.840 But I assume if everyone made an intention to be 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:43.439 more honest every day, if they looked at themselves a 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:46.600 year from now, they find they've made some considerable progress. 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:51.720 If you want to hear more of this conversation and 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:55.280 see it in video, check out our brand new substack. 0:13:56.040 --> 0:14:01.280 Just head to Betrayal dot substack that's sub stac or 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:04.360 just go to subsack dot com, search beyond Betrayal and 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:09.200 hit subscribe. You can find Curtisonhart's book Big Liars on 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:13.520 the American Psychological Association website, Amazon or Barnes and Noble. 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:22.360 Thank you for listening to Betrayal season four. If you 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:24.640 would like to reach out to the Betrayal team, email 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:28.960 us at Betrayalpod at gmail dot com. That's Betrayal Pod 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:32.920 at gmail dot com. Also, please be sure to follow 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:37.240 us on Instagram at Betrayal Pod and me Andrea Hgunning 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:40.240 for all Betrayal content, news and updates. One way to 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:42.640 support the series is by subscribing to our show on 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:47.120 Apple Podcasts. Please rate and review Betrayal. Five star reviews 0:14:47.200 --> 0:14:51.080 help us know you appreciate what we do. Betrayal is 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:54.800 a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of Glass Entertainment Group, 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:59.040 in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show is executive produced 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.680 by Nancy Glass and Jennifer Fasin. Betrayal is hosted and 0:15:02.720 --> 0:15:06.600 produced by me Andrea Gunning, written and produced by Caitlin Golden, 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:11.360 also produced by Carrie Hartman and Ben Fetterman. Our associate 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:15.360 producer is Kristin Melcurie. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:20.240 and Jessica Krincheck. Story editing by Monique Leboard, audio editing 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:24.680 and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, editing by Tanner Robbins, and 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:28.120 special thanks to Caroline and her family. Betrayal's theme is 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:32.880 composed by Oliver Baines. Music library provided by my Music 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:36.120 and For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:39.080 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.