There is another thing that occurs when people commit overts that explains much about human behavior. In Scientology, this is called the overt–motivator sequence.

While a harmful act done by a person against another is called an overt, a harmful act that has been received by a person is called a motivator. It is called a “motivator” because it “motivates,” giving that person a reason or justification to commit overts.

The person who has received the motivator may consider that he has a good enough reason to then commit an overt act against the person who harmed him. But also, when he commits an overt act without having received a motivator, he tries to then find or dream up a motivator to explain or excuse his own harmful action. He will often believe or falsely say something bad happened to him, even if it didn’t.

When dealing with overts and motivators, people often get false ideas about what has really happened. For example, a person can go around believing he was the victim in a car accident when, in fact, he caused the accident. Or he might believe he caused an accident when he was actually only in one.

Say if Joe hits Bill, Joe now believes he should be hit by Bill. More importantly, he can actually get a physical pain or discomfort to prove he has been hit by Bill, even though Bill hasn’t hit him. And people then go around saying how they’ve been hit by Bill, hit by Bill, hit by Bill, and even though it hasn’t occurred, some people will insist that it has occurred.

That is the overt–motivator sequence.