[$tinkle]

whether it's ted haggard from a few years back, or the DNC chair yesterday, why do people in positions of power, fame, or notoriety - and therefore having every spoken & written word chronicled - say things which are quickly & absolutely rebutted as categorically untrue?

like a lot of children, i had a bout with lying, but after being caught & humiliated, or hearing others being rejected for it, i quickly evolved into polite society. call it "societal aversion therapy", if you like. yet, there are quite a lot of those who refuse to, & still struggle well into adulthood with this.

is it a form of addiction?
is there a cognitive root cause?
is there a fundamental lack of shame?

 

[$tinkle]

obviously:

 

[pnj]

Stupidity combined with arrogance and a huge ego will get you a long way.

 

[Pesqueeb]

a fundamental lack of shame?

Is a requirement to be in politics I think.

 

[Jim Mac]

Dunno if this helps, but I found it OK (off Proquest database, peer reviewed):

The influence of role conflict and self-interest on lying in organizations: JBE
Grover, Steven LView Profile; Hui, Chun. Journal of Business Ethics13. 4 (Apr 1994): 295

The self-interest paradigm predicts that unethical behavior occurs when such behavior benefits the actor. A recent model of lying behavior, however, predicts that lying behavior results from an individual's inability to meet conflicting role demands. Prompted by the need to reconcile the self-interest and role conflict theories, an analysis manipulates the benefit from lying and the conflicting role demand. A model integrating the 2 theories predicts the results, which show that both elements - self-benefit and role conflict - influenced lying, separately and interactively. Additionally, the relative strength of the roles in conflict affected their level of influence. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

(study too long to reprint)

CONCLUSION

This study extends the role conflict theory of lying by analyzing a new type of role conflict. Grover's (in press-a) study examined the impact of professional role conflict on lying, finding that it may lead to dishonesty. The present study assessed an inter-role conflict, replicating the link between role conflict and lying. The extension to inter-role conflict is important because it bolsters the power of the role conflict model, and nearly U workers face some sort of inter-role conflict.

This study has contributed to the small but growing behavioral study of ethics in organizations. Randall and Gibson (1991) declared that few studies in business ethics were explicit about the behavior being studied. However, there is some literature that has been explicit and this may be a trend. Hegarty and Sims (1978) found that career pressure and explicit reward influenced kickback behavior. Trevino has tested her interactionist model of ethical behavior (Trevino, 1986) by analyzing kickback behavior and propensity to inform customers of safety defects (Trevino and Youngblood, 1990). Wimbush (1992) has investigated the influence of ethical climates on lying, cheating, and stealing, using Shepard and Hartenian's (1991) measure. And the present data contribute a weaving of self-benefit and role conflict theories in the continuing study of lying behavior. In sum, we are moving closer to an understanding of the various situation and person variables that contribute to prediction of specific ethical and unethical behavior.