LIAR’S POKER — One of the side spectacles of the GOP leadership mess on the House floor is Rep.-Elect George Santos (R-N.Y.), who seemingly fabricated much of his biography . You’ll find him sitting at the back of the chamber, as his new colleagues largely avert their eyes and keep their distance. It’s of particular professional note to Chris Hart and Drew Curtis, professors of psychology who have studied deceit and who wrote the book on pathological liars. The Texas psychologists have watched Santos ascend to Congress with great interest — and not a little regret, as the honesty-challenged freshman congressman-elect burst on the scene just after they sent off the manuscript of their next book to their editors. The title? “Big Liars.” Santos is indisputably a “Big Liar,” they say. But he may or may not be a pathological liar – at least in the way psychologists define it. Curtis and Hart, authors of “Pathological Lying: Theory, Research and Practice,” explained in a joint Zoom conversation with Joanne Kenen , the Commonwealth Fund Journalist in Residence at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, that a prolific liar isn’t necessarily a pathological liar, in the clinical sense. For a pathological liar, the cavalcade of untruths tends to impair functioning, cause distress, even pose a danger to themselves or others. It’s sometimes called compulsive or habitual lying. That doesn’t mean Santos’s lying is normal. To the contrary, Santos’ torrent of lies may be a sign of another disorder, an anti-social personality. An associate professor at Angelo State University, Curtis is a clinical psychologist who sees patients, and the clinician code of ethics precludes him from trying to diagnose strangers he’s seen on TV. Hart, a professor at Texas Woman’s University, is an experimental and research psychologist with no similar ethical bar. He can speculate. Santos is not only a big liar, “he’s a bigger liar than I’ve ever met personally,” observed Hart, which is saying a lot as he has devoted his professional life to studying such specimens of mendacity. Lying is part of human nature. We all fib — but only sometimes. But most people are fundamentally honest, the two scholars explained. “Everyone lies and everyone doesn’t want to be lied to,” said Hart. A small subset of people are responsible for most of the lying — and that’s true across nations and cultures. “There’s a very skewed distribution (of lies), “said Hart. “Ten percent of the population does 50 percent of the lying.” Santos appears to have told so many lies — or resume “embellishments,” as he calls them — that he doesn’t even seem to be able to keep them straight, tweeting for instance different stories about how, when and where his mother died. Although as Curtis pointed out, he should have been able to keep better track of some of his falsehoods. “You know if you went to college or not. Hopefully,” he said, referring to Santos’s retracted claims about his nonexistent degree from Baruch College . Speculation, even professionally informed speculation, Hart reminded us, isn’t a diagnosis. From afar, psychologists can’t really be sure what’s going on in Santos’s head or heart, can’t really know how much strife he’s experiencing or the extent to which his relationships are damaged or destroyed. But based on his public persona, there are indications that Santos does have an antisocial personality disorder. These people tend to lack empathy and remorse. They trod on the rights of others. They take risks. They break rules. They are aggressive, deceptive and manipulative. And they tell a lot of lies. Sometimes lies start small, grow bigger and then get out of control — which is known as the Hydra hypothesis, Curtis said. Sometimes people just take pleasure in getting away with elaborate lies. That, he said, is known as “duping delight” — and some accomplished liars get a kick of trying to fool their therapist. But the bottom line is that Americans actually want their politicians to be honest – and most of them basically are. Think about George Washington, who “could not tell a lie.” Or “Honest Abe” Lincoln. It’s safe to say that’s not how George Santos will be remembered. However his story unfolds, the two scholars are watching. “When you get out to the extremes,” said Hart, “things start getting more interesting.” Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here . | 
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