“Duping Delight is the pleasure we get over having someone else in our control and being able to manipulate them”
Dr Paul Ekman, psychologist.
We already covered in our main article on psychopaths and duping delight of how this toxic micro-expression most often manifests as a grin or smirk that flashes across a person’s face, indicating pleasure at manipulation or deception, or a general sense of pleasure and joy that is inappropriate to the context of the situation being discussed.
In that article we mainly focused on the duping delight displayed with former disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, along with a few more examples from serial killers and politicians.
In this article, we want to broaden out a bit and provide some more specific examples of the duping deight micro-expressions in short videos. Once you understand duping delight and where it comes from, it does become a very interesting perceptual skill, and you’ll start to see it more and more in the media and politics, even from some very high profile public figures.
Let’s run through some more visual displays of duping delight, together with a brief description for each example.
1. Bill Gates – Population control obsessed elitist Bill Gates giggles and smirks as he discusses the economic devastation of the 2020 pandemic and lockdowns: “Global GDP is going to take a massive hit”.
It is an inappropriate reaction to the topic being discussed. There is nothing funny about the destruction of the economics livelihoods of millions of people, and his entire body language and demeanor comes across as very bizarre.
Watch also for another duping delight giggle/smirk towards the end of the clip: “normalcy only returns when we’ve largely ……. the entire global population”. Over the coming months and years, readers can draw their own conclusions as to what these micro-expressions imply.
Unfortunately, this is not a one-off example of this micro-expression from Gates. See here and here for longer interviews with Gates, where again there is a relentless smirk on his face for many portions of the interview, particularly at the start. Again strikes many as being bizarre. What is funny or joyful about any of the events of 2020, which we are all now well aware of?
Yet more videos continue to surface regarding pathological expressions from Gates. Check out this video of him and his wife again smirking as they predict how the “next pandemic” “will get attention this time”.
2. The McCanns – See the video below for some strange behavior from the McCanns in the days immediately after their daughter’s disappearance in 2007.
See here for excellent documentary from Sonia Poulton from which this clip is taken.
3. More From the McCanns – See the video below for a more obviously toxic display of duping delight from Gerry McCann. Watch for the smirk on his face as the reporter brings up the idea that his daughter may still be alive. Again a completely inappropriate reaction. Why would he smirk at this point?
See here for another video of Gerry McCann smirking in a similar way in an interview. Most of these videos are from the earlier days immediately following their daughter’s disappearance. It appears that since then they have been trained by their PR agents like Clarence Mitchell to better conceal their contempt for interviewers and the general public.
4. James Comey – See the short video below from a testimony given by former FBI director James Comey, where again there is a smirk that flashes across his face as he is about to dodge an answer regarding Hilary Clinton.
5. Dominic Cummings – Watch as British politician and former chief advisor to current UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson grins and smirks as he leaves a press conference in which he had to wriggle his way out of trouble by trying to explain why he broke UK lockdown rules in 2020.
6. David Warner – Now let’s turn to an example from the sporting world – see the video below where Australian cricketer David Warner makes an apology statement regarding his role in the 2018 Australian ball tampering scandal in South Africa. The statements from his two co-accomplices in the scandal, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft, show genuine signs of remorse (see here and here), but Warner’s statement contains more toxic micro-expressions if you look more closely.
In his statement, you will see that whenever Warner looks up from his prepared statement, his face breaks out into a smirk that is at odds with the actual situation. Pause the video at 0.38, 0.41-0.42, 0.50, 1.21, 1.44 and 3.32 for just some examples of this. His facial expression looks happy and his mouth is often turned upwards into a smirk – the opposite of a remorseful expression that would be appropriate to the situation.
Perhaps this is simply a peculiarity in Warner’s facial expressions, but when you understand this in the context of some of his other behavior (see this documentary for an excellent overview of the scandal and Warner’s behavior in general), it’s much more likely evidence of personality issues very similar to those of Lance Armstrong that we covered extensively in our main article on duping delight.
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