OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
5:57 PM – Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Throughout her 2024 presidential campaign, Kamala Harris has drawn criticism for her use of “fake accents,” which some psychology experts believe may be a sign of deceit or a lack of confidence.
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Harris, who was born in Oakland, California, and raised in Canada, has come under fire for seemingly adopting urban, Midwestern, Spanish, Southern, and even French accents depending on the demographic she is speaking to.
On Wednesday, a video showing the vice president appearing to speak with a “Spanish twang” during the annual Leadership Conference of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute prompted social media users to question her choice to do so.
New York psychotherapist Jonathan Alpert identified two primary causes for people to change their accents—a phenomenon known as the “chameleon effect” or “mirroring” in psychology circles.
“Mirroring is a tactic many narcissists and other manipulative people often employ in order to ingratiate themselves. They reflect idealized versions of their targets back to them… The purpose of the reconnaissance is to give the narcissist the tools to mirror the target effectively,” according to the outlet Medium.
Harris responded to a gathering of her supporters on Wednesday by saying, “I love you back,” but in an apparent Spanish accent.
Psych professionals who spoke with the Daily Mail also said that people often do this to demonstrate their desire to feel another person’s feelings and attempt empathy, which makes them seem more “trustworthy” to whatever group of people they’re trying to convey their message to.
Some people try to blend in by changing their accent because they want to fit in with whomever they’re speaking to and they don’t want to feel like an outsider.
“Using a fake accent could also be a result of feeling self-conscious around a particular group and feeling like she has to make changes to her baseline voice in order to be accepted—to some extent, this is a natural and normal way to handle people we might perceive as different than ourselves,” Alpert stated.
“There’s a possibility she feels like she won’t fit in, so she overcompensates by taking this whole accent thing to the extreme.”
“I think there could be an element of Harris trying to gain acceptance across these different demographics. But again, I think it’s backfiring,” he concluded.
Harris has been accused of not just changing her accent to fit in with particular groups, but also changing her political views to reflect the current political climate.
In an interview with the hosts of the “Ebro in the Morning” show in 2020, during the height of the BLM George Floyd protests, Harris highly supported the “defund the police” movement. Liberals and leftists took to social media platforms to post anti-police phrases like “No Bootlickers!” or “A.C.A.B,” an acronym that stands for “All Cops Are Bastards.”
This was a far cry from her 2010 Attorney General of California campaign, in which the tense proficiency of a Law and Order episode was mimicked in Harris’s advertisement production, Daily Mail reported.
“Our justice system needs drastic repair,” Harris asserted as she walked with law enforcement officers, with her hair blowing in the wind while a helicopter could be heard over her head.
In addition, the Democrat candidate previously asserted a number of times that she would stop Donald Trump’s border wall project and had even referred to it as a “waste of taxpayer money” and a “medieval vanity project.” However, in August 2024, Harris abruptly promised to approve a bipartisan bill that would provide hundreds of millions of dollars to continue building the Trump wall along the southern border.
To add even more fuel to the fire, in 2019, Harris was a leading proponent of the Green New Deal, which calls for the implementation of forced climate change policies by the government. Yet, in an attempt to win battleground state Pennsylvania, she disavowed any previous statements where she said she was against fracking.
Her flip-flopped policy changes have drawn criticism over the years, but in recent months, her “fake accents” have now been gaining more attention, drawing criticism from many Americans who think it is both shallow, fake, and just plain “weird,” a term that Democrats have attempted to employ in order to criticize the GOP.
“By altering her accent, she might be perceived as inauthentic or manipulative and ultimately could undermine trust if the audience feels she is not genuine,” Alpert stated.
“Authenticity is critical in building meaningful connections with the electorate, and if people perceive the accent as disingenuous, it could damage Harris’s credibility… In Harris’s attempt to connect with a specific group, there is a risk of alienating other audiences… If her accent change is seen as pandering or insincere, it might alienate people who view it as a superficial attempt to fit in rather than a genuine expression of solidarity,” he continued.
Meanwhile, another certified psychologist who has appeared on The Today Show, Dr. Nan Wise, stated: “You’re going to sound different when you talk to children, right?”
“When you talk to old people, you’re gonna sound different. And even if you talk to people who are not native language speakers you automatically adjust.”
“Human beings are very social animals, and some of this accommodation goes along with the way we’re wired to connect and to unintentionally mimic aspects of our social environments,” she added.
But according to a 2021 study, headed by the University of Pennsylvania, code-switching is a deliberate and well-thought out action. Alpert argued that Harris’s accent might be working against her, despite Dr. Wise’s assertion that it lends credibility to the speaker.
“By altering her accent, she might be perceived as inauthentic or manipulative and ultimately could undermine trust if the audience feels she is not genuine,” he continued.
“Authenticity is critical in building meaningful connections with the electorate, and if people perceive the accent as disingenuous, it could damage Harris’s credibility.”
On September 17th, Harris adopted another “fake accent” when participating in a debate with journalists at the National Association of Black Journalists during a news conference.
She was also accused of adopting a fake French accent in 2021 when addressing scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and she previously attempted a strong southern drawl at a rally in Georgia.
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