17 ms·

Charisma: Now You’ve Got It, Now You Don’t

91 points by benbreen 6y ago

FriendlyNormie 6y ago
Orange man bad
082349872349872 6y ago
a book on authoritarian followers, which (at least when I'd read it pre-2016[1]) had some surprising-to-me suggestions for deradicalisation: https://theauthoritarians.org https://theauthoritarians.org (pp. 240-245, by numbering, not by pdf page) Bonus fable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogs_Who_Desired_a_King https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogs_Who_Desired_a_King [1] in its current incarnation, it, like much of the world, may have become obssessed with a particular authoritarian leader. I hope not. Pages 240-245 seem to be as I remembered. See https://theauthoritarians.org https://theauthoritarians.org if you wish to see how it's currently positioned.
- scottlocklin 6y ago
  I read the bits you listed, then had to scan back to figure out what "RWA" means. Correct me if I am wrong, but this book seems to have recycled the ridiculous Theodore Adorno/Frankfurt school nonsense pathologizing Christian Western civilization. The entire idea that people who go to church on Sundays and have world-normal psychological responses, rather than the defective WEIRD[0] emotional pattern that literally only appears in some fraction of highly educated Westerners seems .... a bit questionable. I'd posit that "RWA" is a contradiction in terms in the sense it seems to be used. I mean I get where Adorno was coming from: a bunch of seemingly normal people had just massacred a bunch of his cousins. That doesn't mean I have to take his insane response seriously; particularly when current year WEIRD non-authoritarians so casually massacre members of neurotypical civilizations[1]. The persistence with which people cling to this nonsense indicates it must scratch some psychological itch. It is, however, nonsense. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEIRD#WEIRD_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEIRD#WEIRD_bias [1] I dunno, nobody seems to give a shit we've been blowing up "barbarians" in the middle east for the last 20 years in hopes of making them more .... tolerant.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Adorno sounds familiar, so you're probably right about the source influence. I recall RWA being distinct from "people who go to church on Sundays and have world-normal psychological responses", so I'll check that later and leave it here in an edit. Agreed on the middle east situation, but I've written elsewhere on HN about the catch-22 that I believe has produced a Baptists and Bootleggers dynamic in what Orwell would call the disputed territories. Edit: the RWA score is from a survey on pp11-12. 1. The established authorities generally turn out to be right about things, while the radicals and protestors are usually just “loud mouths” showing off their ignorance. 2. Women should have to promise to obey their husbands when they get married. 3. Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us. 4. Gays and lesbians are just as healthy and moral as anybody else. 5. It is always better to trust the judgment of the proper authorities in government and religion than to listen to the noisy rabble-rousers in our society who are trying to create doubt in people’s minds 6. Atheists and others who have rebelled against the established religions are no doubt every bit as good and virtuous as those who attend church regularly. 7. The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas. 8. There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps. 9. Our country needs free thinkers who have the courage to defy traditional ways, even if this upsets many people. 10. Our country will be destroyed someday if we do not smash the perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs. 11. Everyone should have their own lifestyle, religious beliefs, and sexual preferences, even if it makes them different from everyone else. 12. The “old-fashioned ways” and the “old-fashioned values” still show the best way to live. 13. You have to admire those who challenged the law and the majority’s view by protesting for women’s abortion rights, for animal rights, or to abolish school prayer. 14. What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path. 15. Some of the best people in our country are those who are challenging our government, criticizing religion, and ignoring the “normal way things are supposed to be done.” 16. God’s laws about abortion, pornography and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late, and those who break them must be strongly punished. 17. There are many radical, immoral people in our country today, who are trying to ruin it for their own godless purposes, whom the authorities should put out of action. 18. A “woman’s place” should be wherever she wants to be. The days when women are submissive to their husbands and social conventions belong strictly in the past. 19. Our country will be great if we honor the ways of our forefathers, do what the authorities tell us to do, and get rid of the “rotten apples” who are ruining everything. 20. There is no “ONE right way” to live life; everybody has to create their own way. 21. Homosexuals and feminists should be praised for being brave enough to defy “traditional family values. 22. This country would work a lot better if certain groups of troublemakers would just shut up and accept their group’s traditional place in society. Responses given on a -4 to 4 scale, and after scoring the possible results are 20 to 180. Page 14 states: "Introductory psychology students at my Canadian university average about 75. Their parents average about 90. Both scores are below the mid-point of the scale, which is 100, so most people in these groups are not authoritarian followers in absolute terms. Neither are most Americans, it seems. Mick McWilliams and Jeremy Keil administered the RWA scale to a reasonably representative sample of 1000 Americans in 2005 for the Libertarian Party and discovered an average score of 90. Thus the Manitoba parent samples seem similar in overall authoritarianism to a representative American adult sample. My Manitoba students score about the same on the RWA scale as most American university students do too." (as to church-going, about 400 of those 1000 sampled probably go to church on their relevant day of the week.)
- 43423434 6y ago
  Do you think normalizing anti-white terms like "Karen," to the point that "respectable" outlets like the WaPo and NYT use them, or selectively capitalizing Black but not white when referring to race, as the AP (a supposedly unbiased outlet) recently committed to doing, or making white children like the Covington Kids targets of public hate campaigns for smiling while being harassed by minorities, or pushing to ban "hate speech" (which in practice just means white speech) help with deradicalization?
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24795550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24795550 (and my followup tomorrow) I think (not being familiar with any of the above except for Karen[1]) you're mentioning US-specific culture war items which are orthogonal to the subject of the book, which are the sort of beliefs that lead "high RWA" followers to violently punish those their leaders have branded as Other. The book has to do more with the sort of 1940's beliefs that built and staffed Treblinka, or the sort of 1950's beliefs that lynched Emmett Till, or the sort of 1970's beliefs that led to people being pushed out of helicopters, than to the sorts of beliefs to which I believe you refer. [1] which I know of as a meme where melanin is incidental. Compare Scumbag Steve.
b0rsuk 6y ago
As far as I'm concerned charisma is like heavy perfume or cologne that someone wears when they don't take a shower. It's probably covering something else. -- dr Ramani Durvasula, licensed clinical psychologist https://youtu.be/8EqSlSPHjR0?t=195 https://youtu.be/8EqSlSPHjR0?t=195
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- oblio 6y ago
  So, basically, it's better to be uncharismatic? I find this hard to believe, we're social creatures.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    It's not a dichotomy, there is a middle ground.
  - mathattack 6y ago
    More that we should be suspicious of others who are overly charismatic.
    - riyadparvez 6y ago
      This. I've seen the same in my personal life. It intuitively makes sense. If someone is just outright toxic without any redeemable quality, you will not socialize with them. It's only when they have superficial charm to cover up their toxicity, you'll be interested or manipulated to have them in their life.
      - mathattack 6y ago
        It’s also why interviewing is so tough.
- hedberg10 6y ago
  Dr Ramani is pretty awesome, but all her views are heavily skewed towards narcissism and it's dangers, rightfully so, since people seem to underestimate that trait. It all depends how you define charisma. If it's "larger than life" it can be and is often abused, if it's "easy to be around and suave" that comes closer to what I would think charisma is.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
arminiusreturns 6y ago
> Weber claimed that a charismatic leader remains charismatic only so long as he is perceived to be charismatic. There is, he held, a reciprocity or “recognition” that ties charismatic leaders to their followers I haven't really thought of it in this way, but it gave me an epiphany that my struggle with being charismatic, which is that I can be very, but it takes effort and is exhausting sometimes, is at least partly due to the context switching required to "know your audience". If your audience changes often, it becomes more difficult to maintain.
motohagiography 6y ago
There is a saying that, "all political careers end in failure," which references this aspect of charisma where you have it - until you don't. It is an example of what happens when you fail a test of charisma, where you never really get it back in that particular relationship to those people. I read Olivia Fox-Cabane's work on charisma (Charisma Myth) and she showed how it can be a set of attributes you can practice. Initially, I concluded charisma is a specific relationship between you and a group of others, but with time, it has become clear that charisma is an instinct or decision to relate to the external world in a particular way. It is absolutely something that can be taught, practised, and developed. The article expressed a certain backbiting suspicion that I think characterizes the intellectual view of charismatic people, and it focused on the charisma of authoritarian leaders, but oddly doesn't mention super-charismatics like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and other progressive persuaders. Ultimately, I think this type of critical view of charisma demoralizes people away from believing anything strongly enough to follow a leader in pursuit of their interests, which seems like an altogether more insidious effect than the posturing of a leader could be.
- mc32 6y ago
  Let’s not forget charismatic (but ultimately unsympathetic) leaders like Castro and the Che. They were by any measure charismatic. They leveraged that to further their visions to an end. But, not all charismatic people use their charisma for the bad. Some use it to form friendships and to climb social ladders, some to be productive in their role (salespeople), etc. For some people it comes naturally. For some it’s forced (practiced). Not sure which ones do better, though intuitively I’d say the naturals would come across better.
  - wayoutthere 6y ago
    I think your opinion on Castro or Che depends on perspective. Cuba was relatively successful until the decline of the Soviet Union by most measures — but when the neighboring superpower embargoes you because your political system is seen as an existential threat to the ruling class, it’s hard to close the gap. To classify them as objectively “bad” would mean doing the same to most US presidents. From the outside, all of our modern presidents have done some horrific things. A big part of why the Cuban revolution is viewed negatively in the US is that the Cubans were sick of their island being totally owned as a playground for the rich in another country — things were objectively better for most Cubans in the years after the revolution. So Americans and wealthy Cubans were largely the early losers in the revolution, and wanted to punish the country for having the nerve to seize back the land. The embargo really killed their ability to build an economy, which led to a lot of poverty and was largely outside the control of the Cuban government.
o_class_star 6y ago
As I get older, my theory of charisma is that it's a product, more than it is an innate trait, and that anyone can "become charismatic", although 99.9 percent of people never will, and the worst thing you can do for yourself is try. People seem superhuman-- energetic, brilliant, capable-- when surrounded by people who invest themselves entirely in making them seem so. Steve Jobs had no special social acumen, above-average but not genius-level intelligence, and no more hours in his day than the 24 we all have, but he managed to surround himself with the right people and, for a period of about 20 years, managed to convince the world that he had superhuman powers and a "reality distortion field" when in reality he was just a capitalist who dropped acid once. Plenty of charismatic people are socially inept, charmless, and unpleasant in close interpersonal relationships, but this doesn't make them any less charismatic on a stage. They often have no genuine friends, but tens or hundreds or thousands of people who will put aside their own concerns to do things for the charismatic individual. Charisma is a pattern by which other people, for reasons that are hard to parse, and through mechanisms that are invisible, do things for the charismatic person. A charismatic person is threatening because others will kill for him, and he's a desirable benefactor because others will commit resources to his causes, but it seems to be a self-perpetuating phenomenon that snowballs and can carry on for most of a lifetime. It does seem to collapse in old age. This is why charismatic but hideous people like Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and Bill Cosby meet such ignominious ends. They're invincible, until they're not. There are skills that enhance a person's charisma. You can learn rhetoric, public speaking, and the norms of social interaction. But that's all they are: skills. Nothing can guarantee charisma. Nothing can guarantee that you'll get that core set of people to follow you that will produce a snowball effect. On that, it seems to be pretty random who wins and who doesn't. Charisma exists because people want to be the charismatic person. They want to be someone who can wave a hand and bring ruin to their enemies. What they don't realize is that by following the charismatic, they're defeating their own purpose. It is not traits of the charismatic that generate this feedback loop. It is mostly just luck. That said, the way to improve one's odds to find people who are looking for a charismatic to follow, which means finding new territory, rather than hanging around an existing charismatic in a space where such people are already spoken-for.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
wallflower 6y ago
> I once shook hands with Bill Clinton, and for one tiny moment, he made me feel like the most important person in the world. That's charisma. > It's not far off from love, is it? When someone's in love with you, they see you as the most wonderful person in the world. It's a hell of a feeling. If you can do that for people you're not in love with, you've got charisma. (From the start of that comment) > I think the formula for charisma is simple: convince people that you see them as better than they see themselves. If you make people feel like they're special -- smarter, funnier, braver, more beautiful -- than they think they are, they'll stick around you because they want to see themselves this way. https://ask.metafilter.com/128697/What-is-charisma https://ask.metafilter.com/128697/What-is-charisma
- hindsightbias 6y ago
  I shook hands with Clinton in 1990. Did not know at that moment who he was, but knew he was important. Not physically the guy other guys would think had movie star looks or charisma (say, like JFK), but very confident and looked you straight in the eye. Everyone at that event can tell you what conversation they had with him and every conversation was on a different topic. He was curious, approachable, a sponge of knowledge and never forgot a face and name (particularly if you were attractive). So you can get along with decent looks, a bit of charisma, but a lot farther if you know how to be engaging in conversations and make people feel special/important.
anonu 6y ago
Today are the US Presidential town halls - held separately on 2 different TV networks. The Trump version was announced 2 days ago while the Biden one was planned a bit before that. Whatever you think of Trump, he's playing a game of chess. Who's going to get the better ratings? I would wager that even people voting for Biden would probably be more interested in tuning into Trump - just purely from an entertainment point of view. I can see Trump touting his outsized ratings post town-hall. I may be wrong. Maybe even a bit cynical at this stage....

91 points by benbreen 6y ago

Orange man bad

a book on authoritarian followers, which (at least when I'd read it pre-2016[1]) had some surprising-to-me suggestions for deradicalisation: https://theauthoritarians.org https://theauthoritarians.org (pp. 240-245, by numbering, not by pdf page) Bonus fable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogs_Who_Desired_a_King https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogs_Who_Desired_a_King [1] in its current incarnation, it, like much of the world, may have become obssessed with a particular authoritarian leader. I hope not. Pages 240-245 seem to be as I remembered. See https://theauthoritarians.org https://theauthoritarians.org if you wish to see how it's currently positioned.

scottlocklin 6y ago
I read the bits you listed, then had to scan back to figure out what "RWA" means. Correct me if I am wrong, but this book seems to have recycled the ridiculous Theodore Adorno/Frankfurt school nonsense pathologizing Christian Western civilization. The entire idea that people who go to church on Sundays and have world-normal psychological responses, rather than the defective WEIRD[0] emotional pattern that literally only appears in some fraction of highly educated Westerners seems .... a bit questionable. I'd posit that "RWA" is a contradiction in terms in the sense it seems to be used. I mean I get where Adorno was coming from: a bunch of seemingly normal people had just massacred a bunch of his cousins. That doesn't mean I have to take his insane response seriously; particularly when current year WEIRD non-authoritarians so casually massacre members of neurotypical civilizations[1]. The persistence with which people cling to this nonsense indicates it must scratch some psychological itch. It is, however, nonsense. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEIRD#WEIRD_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEIRD#WEIRD_bias [1] I dunno, nobody seems to give a shit we've been blowing up "barbarians" in the middle east for the last 20 years in hopes of making them more .... tolerant.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Adorno sounds familiar, so you're probably right about the source influence. I recall RWA being distinct from "people who go to church on Sundays and have world-normal psychological responses", so I'll check that later and leave it here in an edit. Agreed on the middle east situation, but I've written elsewhere on HN about the catch-22 that I believe has produced a Baptists and Bootleggers dynamic in what Orwell would call the disputed territories. Edit: the RWA score is from a survey on pp11-12. 1. The established authorities generally turn out to be right about things, while the radicals and protestors are usually just “loud mouths” showing off their ignorance. 2. Women should have to promise to obey their husbands when they get married. 3. Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us. 4. Gays and lesbians are just as healthy and moral as anybody else. 5. It is always better to trust the judgment of the proper authorities in government and religion than to listen to the noisy rabble-rousers in our society who are trying to create doubt in people’s minds 6. Atheists and others who have rebelled against the established religions are no doubt every bit as good and virtuous as those who attend church regularly. 7. The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas. 8. There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps. 9. Our country needs free thinkers who have the courage to defy traditional ways, even if this upsets many people. 10. Our country will be destroyed someday if we do not smash the perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs. 11. Everyone should have their own lifestyle, religious beliefs, and sexual preferences, even if it makes them different from everyone else. 12. The “old-fashioned ways” and the “old-fashioned values” still show the best way to live. 13. You have to admire those who challenged the law and the majority’s view by protesting for women’s abortion rights, for animal rights, or to abolish school prayer. 14. What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path. 15. Some of the best people in our country are those who are challenging our government, criticizing religion, and ignoring the “normal way things are supposed to be done.” 16. God’s laws about abortion, pornography and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late, and those who break them must be strongly punished. 17. There are many radical, immoral people in our country today, who are trying to ruin it for their own godless purposes, whom the authorities should put out of action. 18. A “woman’s place” should be wherever she wants to be. The days when women are submissive to their husbands and social conventions belong strictly in the past. 19. Our country will be great if we honor the ways of our forefathers, do what the authorities tell us to do, and get rid of the “rotten apples” who are ruining everything. 20. There is no “ONE right way” to live life; everybody has to create their own way. 21. Homosexuals and feminists should be praised for being brave enough to defy “traditional family values. 22. This country would work a lot better if certain groups of troublemakers would just shut up and accept their group’s traditional place in society. Responses given on a -4 to 4 scale, and after scoring the possible results are 20 to 180. Page 14 states: "Introductory psychology students at my Canadian university average about 75. Their parents average about 90. Both scores are below the mid-point of the scale, which is 100, so most people in these groups are not authoritarian followers in absolute terms. Neither are most Americans, it seems. Mick McWilliams and Jeremy Keil administered the RWA scale to a reasonably representative sample of 1000 Americans in 2005 for the Libertarian Party and discovered an average score of 90. Thus the Manitoba parent samples seem similar in overall authoritarianism to a representative American adult sample. My Manitoba students score about the same on the RWA scale as most American university students do too." (as to church-going, about 400 of those 1000 sampled probably go to church on their relevant day of the week.)
43423434 6y ago
Do you think normalizing anti-white terms like "Karen," to the point that "respectable" outlets like the WaPo and NYT use them, or selectively capitalizing Black but not white when referring to race, as the AP (a supposedly unbiased outlet) recently committed to doing, or making white children like the Covington Kids targets of public hate campaigns for smiling while being harassed by minorities, or pushing to ban "hate speech" (which in practice just means white speech) help with deradicalization?
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24795550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24795550 (and my followup tomorrow) I think (not being familiar with any of the above except for Karen[1]) you're mentioning US-specific culture war items which are orthogonal to the subject of the book, which are the sort of beliefs that lead "high RWA" followers to violently punish those their leaders have branded as Other. The book has to do more with the sort of 1940's beliefs that built and staffed Treblinka, or the sort of 1950's beliefs that lynched Emmett Till, or the sort of 1970's beliefs that led to people being pushed out of helicopters, than to the sorts of beliefs to which I believe you refer. [1] which I know of as a meme where melanin is incidental. Compare Scumbag Steve.

b0rsuk 6y ago

As far as I'm concerned charisma is like heavy perfume or cologne that someone wears when they don't take a shower. It's probably covering something else. -- dr Ramani Durvasula, licensed clinical psychologist https://youtu.be/8EqSlSPHjR0?t=195 https://youtu.be/8EqSlSPHjR0?t=195

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
oblio 6y ago
So, basically, it's better to be uncharismatic? I find this hard to believe, we're social creatures.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  It's not a dichotomy, there is a middle ground.
- mathattack 6y ago
  More that we should be suspicious of others who are overly charismatic.
  - riyadparvez 6y ago
    This. I've seen the same in my personal life. It intuitively makes sense. If someone is just outright toxic without any redeemable quality, you will not socialize with them. It's only when they have superficial charm to cover up their toxicity, you'll be interested or manipulated to have them in their life.
    - mathattack 6y ago
      It’s also why interviewing is so tough.
hedberg10 6y ago
Dr Ramani is pretty awesome, but all her views are heavily skewed towards narcissism and it's dangers, rightfully so, since people seem to underestimate that trait. It all depends how you define charisma. If it's "larger than life" it can be and is often abused, if it's "easy to be around and suave" that comes closer to what I would think charisma is.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

arminiusreturns 6y ago

> Weber claimed that a charismatic leader remains charismatic only so long as he is perceived to be charismatic. There is, he held, a reciprocity or “recognition” that ties charismatic leaders to their followers I haven't really thought of it in this way, but it gave me an epiphany that my struggle with being charismatic, which is that I can be very, but it takes effort and is exhausting sometimes, is at least partly due to the context switching required to "know your audience". If your audience changes often, it becomes more difficult to maintain.

motohagiography 6y ago

There is a saying that, "all political careers end in failure," which references this aspect of charisma where you have it - until you don't. It is an example of what happens when you fail a test of charisma, where you never really get it back in that particular relationship to those people. I read Olivia Fox-Cabane's work on charisma (Charisma Myth) and she showed how it can be a set of attributes you can practice. Initially, I concluded charisma is a specific relationship between you and a group of others, but with time, it has become clear that charisma is an instinct or decision to relate to the external world in a particular way. It is absolutely something that can be taught, practised, and developed. The article expressed a certain backbiting suspicion that I think characterizes the intellectual view of charismatic people, and it focused on the charisma of authoritarian leaders, but oddly doesn't mention super-charismatics like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and other progressive persuaders. Ultimately, I think this type of critical view of charisma demoralizes people away from believing anything strongly enough to follow a leader in pursuit of their interests, which seems like an altogether more insidious effect than the posturing of a leader could be.

mc32 6y ago
Let’s not forget charismatic (but ultimately unsympathetic) leaders like Castro and the Che. They were by any measure charismatic. They leveraged that to further their visions to an end. But, not all charismatic people use their charisma for the bad. Some use it to form friendships and to climb social ladders, some to be productive in their role (salespeople), etc. For some people it comes naturally. For some it’s forced (practiced). Not sure which ones do better, though intuitively I’d say the naturals would come across better.
- wayoutthere 6y ago
  I think your opinion on Castro or Che depends on perspective. Cuba was relatively successful until the decline of the Soviet Union by most measures — but when the neighboring superpower embargoes you because your political system is seen as an existential threat to the ruling class, it’s hard to close the gap. To classify them as objectively “bad” would mean doing the same to most US presidents. From the outside, all of our modern presidents have done some horrific things. A big part of why the Cuban revolution is viewed negatively in the US is that the Cubans were sick of their island being totally owned as a playground for the rich in another country — things were objectively better for most Cubans in the years after the revolution. So Americans and wealthy Cubans were largely the early losers in the revolution, and wanted to punish the country for having the nerve to seize back the land. The embargo really killed their ability to build an economy, which led to a lot of poverty and was largely outside the control of the Cuban government.

o_class_star 6y ago

As I get older, my theory of charisma is that it's a product, more than it is an innate trait, and that anyone can "become charismatic", although 99.9 percent of people never will, and the worst thing you can do for yourself is try. People seem superhuman-- energetic, brilliant, capable-- when surrounded by people who invest themselves entirely in making them seem so. Steve Jobs had no special social acumen, above-average but not genius-level intelligence, and no more hours in his day than the 24 we all have, but he managed to surround himself with the right people and, for a period of about 20 years, managed to convince the world that he had superhuman powers and a "reality distortion field" when in reality he was just a capitalist who dropped acid once. Plenty of charismatic people are socially inept, charmless, and unpleasant in close interpersonal relationships, but this doesn't make them any less charismatic on a stage. They often have no genuine friends, but tens or hundreds or thousands of people who will put aside their own concerns to do things for the charismatic individual. Charisma is a pattern by which other people, for reasons that are hard to parse, and through mechanisms that are invisible, do things for the charismatic person. A charismatic person is threatening because others will kill for him, and he's a desirable benefactor because others will commit resources to his causes, but it seems to be a self-perpetuating phenomenon that snowballs and can carry on for most of a lifetime. It does seem to collapse in old age. This is why charismatic but hideous people like Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, and Bill Cosby meet such ignominious ends. They're invincible, until they're not. There are skills that enhance a person's charisma. You can learn rhetoric, public speaking, and the norms of social interaction. But that's all they are: skills. Nothing can guarantee charisma. Nothing can guarantee that you'll get that core set of people to follow you that will produce a snowball effect. On that, it seems to be pretty random who wins and who doesn't. Charisma exists because people want to be the charismatic person. They want to be someone who can wave a hand and bring ruin to their enemies. What they don't realize is that by following the charismatic, they're defeating their own purpose. It is not traits of the charismatic that generate this feedback loop. It is mostly just luck. That said, the way to improve one's odds to find people who are looking for a charismatic to follow, which means finding new territory, rather than hanging around an existing charismatic in a space where such people are already spoken-for.

082349872349872 6y ago

wallflower 6y ago

> I once shook hands with Bill Clinton, and for one tiny moment, he made me feel like the most important person in the world. That's charisma. > It's not far off from love, is it? When someone's in love with you, they see you as the most wonderful person in the world. It's a hell of a feeling. If you can do that for people you're not in love with, you've got charisma. (From the start of that comment) > I think the formula for charisma is simple: convince people that you see them as better than they see themselves. If you make people feel like they're special -- smarter, funnier, braver, more beautiful -- than they think they are, they'll stick around you because they want to see themselves this way. https://ask.metafilter.com/128697/What-is-charisma https://ask.metafilter.com/128697/What-is-charisma

hindsightbias 6y ago
I shook hands with Clinton in 1990. Did not know at that moment who he was, but knew he was important. Not physically the guy other guys would think had movie star looks or charisma (say, like JFK), but very confident and looked you straight in the eye. Everyone at that event can tell you what conversation they had with him and every conversation was on a different topic. He was curious, approachable, a sponge of knowledge and never forgot a face and name (particularly if you were attractive). So you can get along with decent looks, a bit of charisma, but a lot farther if you know how to be engaging in conversations and make people feel special/important.

anonu 6y ago

Today are the US Presidential town halls - held separately on 2 different TV networks. The Trump version was announced 2 days ago while the Biden one was planned a bit before that. Whatever you think of Trump, he's playing a game of chess. Who's going to get the better ratings? I would wager that even people voting for Biden would probably be more interested in tuning into Trump - just purely from an entertainment point of view. I can see Trump touting his outsized ratings post town-hall. I may be wrong. Maybe even a bit cynical at this stage....