Thread: The Psychology of Why Carly Fiorina Continues To Defend Planned Parenthood Claims

The Psychology of Why Carly Fiorina Continues To Defend Planned Parenthood Claims

Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy
September 28, 2015

She’s on the defense, but Fiorina is sticking to her story, even though most major media organizations are calling her out on it. Experts offer opinions as to why. (Photo: Getty Images)

Continuing her insistence that the Planned Parenthood video she described in the most recent GOP Presidential Debate — the one that has been universally denounced by journalists and fact-checkers as being non-existent and the one that the Carly for America Super-PAC attempted to will into being last week — former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press on Sunday (Sept. 27) that this video is, she swears, real.

“Are you willing now to concede that you exaggerated that scene?” Todd asked Fiorina regarding her description of an aborted fetus kicking while Planned Parenthood staff shout that it must be kept alive to harvest its brain.

“No, not at all,” Fiorina said with the same conviction that made her the run-away winner of the most recent debate. “That scene absolutely does exist, and that voice saying what I said they were saying, “We’re going to keep it alive to harvest its brain” exists as well.”

“You saw that moment on the tape?” Todd continues, to which Fiorina replies, “Yes, and I would challenge Planned Parenthood.…Planned Parenthood will not and cannot deny this because it is happening.”

“The footage you describe at best is a re-enactment. The videos – even the people that made the videos admitted stock footage, yet you went right along and said it’s Planned Parenthood.”

“Chuck, Chuck, Chuck – do you think this is not happening?” Fiorina concluded, exasperated and resolute.

Fiorina, it seems, cannot not tell a lie.

As Columbia Journalism School professor and director of the school’s digital media program Duy Linh Tu told Yahoo Health last week regarding the video released by the Carly for America super PAC, “I’m not quite sure what Fiorina’s new video proves. It’s a series of quick cuts of fetuses, combined with her statements at the CNN debate. Makes for a great political ad, but there’s no sequencing to the shots that gives the viewer any better idea of what the raw footage really showed. If Fiorina wants to put this issue to rest, she should find and release any unedited footage. Anyone can take footage of the pope and make him look like the devil with the right editing.”

Related: Fact-Checking Carly Fiorina’s Debate Statements on Planned Parenthood

“In the case of Carly Fiorina, there may actually be a video being passed off as one she is referring to, though it is not actually a video of an abortion,” Art Markman, PhD, and the Annabel Iron Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, tells Yahoo Health. “So it’s possible she’s doubling down on something, because she actually has a — flawed — source. That said, there are lots of examples of people doubling down on lies. Lance Armstrong, for example, continued to maintain that he was not doping for years and even took people to court.”

A 1996 study by the psychologist Bella DePaulo, PhD, found that most people fib once to twice a day. According to DePaulo’s study, a lie is defined as something that misleads and deliberately conveying a false impression. A subsequent study done by DePaulo and Deborah A. Kashy, PhD, found that liars are “manipulative,” “Machiavellian,” and “overly concerned with the impression they make on others.”

Related: Undercover Antiabortion Video Showed Images of Stillborn — Not Aborted — Fetus

And yet, the two also found that liars, “don’t always fit the stereotype of caring only about themselves. Further research reveals that extroverted, sociable people are slightly more likely to lie, and that some personality and physical traits – notably self-confidence and physical attractiveness – have been linked to an individual’s skill at lying under pressure.”

This weekend, The Washington Post’s Editorial Board ran an editorial entitled, “Fiorina’s falsehoods,” in which they point out that while Fiorina “could have acknowledged her error while maintaining, fairly, that the tapes contain other disturbing images and language and while affirming her objections to Planned Parenthood.” She instead has done nothing but insist that the video she describes exists and that it is the naysayers who are wrong. “Ms. Fiorina may have deeply felt objections to abortion. That doesn’t excuse her use of mistruths to justify her willingness to shut down the government,” they conclude.

When questioned about the Washington Post’s editorial by Todd on Meet the Press, Fiorina answered that “I don’t think the Washington Post has a lot of credibility here.”

Markman also explains that “when you have defended yourself a few times for something that you know is a lie, you have few other options. Either you come clean or you redouble your efforts to convince others that you are telling the truth. When the consequences of being caught in a lie are significant (as they clearly were for Lance Armstrong), then the only option is to engage in the kind of behavior you would use if you were, in fact, telling the truth.”

“You defend yourself and hope that other people back down,” says Markman.

https://www.yahoo.com/health/the-psy...188911158.html

Fiorina not only lied about Planned Parenthood.

She lied about her career, "working her way up from a secretary". Well, that's no different than any college student working in a fast food restaurant to earn extra money while they're in college. She worked part-time in a real estate office answering phones while she was in college.

After college, when she actually started working full-time, she started her "career" as a well-paid well-positioned MANAGEMENT TRAINEE at ATT. She did not start her career as a secretary.

She lied about her family, claiming she buried a daughter due to drug addiction. It wasn't her daughter, it was her husband's daughter, she didn't raise her, the daughter didn't even live with them, except for a short time when the daughter was in college, I guess to save money on dorm rooms or living on campus, a hard thing to imagine given the amount of income the Fiorina's had at that time. Plus the daughter didn't die from marijuana which was the topic of the discussion in the debate when Fiorina made these statements, she suffered from bulimia, alcoholism, and prescription pill addiction. The actual cause of her death was never published.

I also think she lied in her book about how they were notified. She claimed her husband knew Fire Department staff in New Jersey and called them to check on his daughter, and then 2 police officers knocked on their door in California to tell them the bad news. Well, why didn't the Fire Department guys just call them back? Or why didn't the police in New Jersey call them back? Since when do they call police officers in another state to go door to door to deliver news like this?

In any event, according to the obituary of Frank's daughter, she lived in Manassas, Virginia, not New Jersey, when she died.

She's lied about the sale of printers to Iran. She claimed HP management didn't know and was exonerated by the SEC. That is totally false. Of course HP management knew they were selling printers in Iran through a third party. SEC didn't exonerate management, they simply pointed out that under US sanctions laws, you can evade the sanctions by selling sanctioned goods through third parties which is exactly why HP sold the printers that way through their European subsidiary. HP printers were 40% of the Iran printer market, so of course HP knew. They not only knew, they planned it. It was legal, but still a deliberate scheme to evade the law.

When you lie about a woman's health agency, when you lie about your career, when you lie about your family, when you lie about schemes to bypass US law on sanctions against Iran, well, you not only will lie about anything, you've already lied about everything that matters.

Shame on You, Carly Fiorina. Shame On You.

boy judy
your good wtg