Dr. Joyce Brothers: Assessing Gary Condit's truthfulness

Dr. Joyce Brothers

Joyce Brothers has been a psychologist for more than 30 years. She writes a daily column, "Intimate Advice," which is syndicated worldwide, as well as several monthly magazine columns. Dr. Brothers joined the CNN.com chat room from New York on Friday, August 24, 2001.

CNN: Good morning Dr. Joyce Brothers and welcome.

DR. JOYCE BROTHERS: I'm delighted to be part of this CNN experience, a new one for me. Not new with CNN, but new on the Internet. I welcome questions and people talking to me. One of the nice things I've found in my career is that it's wonderful to talk face to face, by phone, on TV, and now on the Internet.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Dr Brothers, could you please share your assessment of the interview last night. Do you feel that Condit was forthcoming? Or importantly, telling the truth?

RESOURCES Message Board: Condit and the Levy Case   Transcript of the Gary Condit interview with Connie Chung

BROTHERS: Someone who says "trust me," it's a matter of probability. You can't just say "trust me." The probability of fidelity in a marriage gets built on events such as this. A man says to his wife, "Dear, I have to work late in the office this week," and she says "fine," and he stays out. The next week, he says, "I have to work late again this week," and she says "fine." And then the third week he's "working late," little Johnny falls down and hurts his arm, and Mom has to take the child to the hospital, and she calls the office to tell dad, and lo and behold, he's working late. So, he's built the probability that he's actually working late, and not using this as an excuse. Now, when a man, such as what we saw last night, Congressman Condit, says that Mrs. Levy did not tell the truth, that when she asked him, "Did you have an affair with my daughter," he told her the truth, and that he was not lying to her, and that she misunderstood his answer .... He also said last night that the flight attendant that said they had an affair for over a year, and that his lawyer sent her a document to be signed -- that it was just lawyer to lawyer, and that she was not telling the truth, that they didn't have an affair, and he didn't encourage her to not be truthful. He also said that the woman who gave him the expensive watch, and said they had an affair, was not telling the truth, that he disposed of the watch box a little before the police were to examine his apartment, that it was because he was cleaning out his office, and didn't want to put it in the trash nearby, so he went to great extremes to throw it out elsewhere. All of these statements are difficult to add up, if you're dealing with probabilities of truthfulness.

Congressman Condit was very clearly aware of body language studies, which show that if you fidget, or touch your nose, or do anything of that kind, then you do not look like you are forthcoming or responsive. But there are certain indications that you can't control very well. There is something called micromemetic responses which can tell a lot about what a person is saying. What this means is that if you are able to slow down the tape, and take it frame by frame, a television or movie frame, and look at the person's expression at the moment they're saying certain words, the two do not seem to go together. People who did this with some of President Nixon's statements found this lack of congruence in words and facial expression. I'd be interested in seeing whether there was this kind of lack of congruence, which seemed to me to be there at certain important answers.

It seemed to me to signal something that other people picked up by national studies this morning, which indicate that 52 percent of people who heard the speech thought he was not forthcoming, that he had knowledge that he did not share. And 85 percent, when asked, if he were your Congressman, would you vote for him again, said no. So, the answer is that a lot of people were not very satisfied with that interview, in terms of how it came across to them.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Dr Brothers ... Do you think that Rep. Condit doesn't really have a clear grasp of how the American people feel about his situation?

MORE STORIES Californians react to Condit interview   Condit admits Levy relationship but not affair

BROTHERS: I don't think that Congressman Condit understands that simply saying "I have been married for 34 years, and I'm not perfect," is not really an answer to "do you consider yourself a moral person." It also is, to me, and a lot of people I've spoken with, feel that it doesn't show compassion to the Levys, it doesn't show an apology for not being as forthcoming as he could have been at the beginning. I think most Americans were looking for some kind of an apology, but apologies need to have certain steps in order to be effective.

When a man says, "You should ask Chandra Levy to explain herself, too bad she isn't here," that does not seem to be a very comfortable way of explaining something. In order for an apology to be an apology, the person has to see the impact of his behavior on another person. For an apology to be acceptable, you need to own the error or admit it, and you need to show emotion, which did not show other than a kind of grimness. There was no overt apology for the pain that the Levys are going through. Whether you feel you have guilt whatsoever, all of us see Mrs. Levy's anguish, and feel sad for her. In order for an apology to be an apology and acceptable to the American people, you have to show you've learned from your error. And saying that he was completely forthcoming to the police in three interviews, and later, the police say it took the third interview before he said he had an affair with Chandra Levy. That's a little disturbing.

CHAT PARTICIPANT: Dr. Brothers: Don't you think the media has stepped over the line trying to get into this man's personal life without any proof that his is in any way connected with the disappearance of Chandra Levy?

BROTHERS: It's very hard for anyone to say how much privacy a person has or doesn't have. But not to answer a perfectly reasonable question that Connie Chung asked him last night: "how many times was Chandra Levy at your apartment?" -- you know, if I have friends or relatives at my apartment, there's nothing accusatory about asking how many times a person has been there. It's a reasonable question, and to give no response to that, I don't think it's a problem of the media. This man has chosen to say he wants to set the record straight, but I didn't see any record being set straight last night.

CNN: Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Joyce Brothers.

BROTHERS: I would like to thank all of you who asked questions, and those who didn't get a chance to ask questions. I hope I've given you a little something to think about, and I appreciate your participation, and thank you for being interested in what I had to say.

Dr. Joyce Brothers joined CNN.com Newsroom via telephone from New York, NY. CNN provided a typist for her. The above is an edited transcript of the interview on Friday, August 24, 2001.