For all the gen Z slang that has been thrown around by politicians in recent months, one term has been largely absent from the election campaign: “rizz”. Oxford University Press’s 2023 word of the year is defined as “style, charm or attractiveness”; in gen Z parlance it refers specifically to romantic appeal.
On the campaign trail, neither major party leader, thankfully, has deployed the term to cringeworthy effect. But a trait to which rizz is inextricably linked – charisma – has historically been linked to electoral victory.
As a quality, charisma can be difficult to pin down: you know it when you see it, but articulating why someone possesses it is a more difficult endeavour. Bob Hawke, Australia’s longest-serving Labor prime minister, had it in spades. As does – depending on who you ask – Barack Obama, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump.
Intrinsic or bestowed?
The German sociologist Max Weber is credited for the term charisma in its modern usage, which he defined as an individual “treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary.”
In the past, Weber’s definition has been taken to mean that leaders intrinsically possess a preternatural je ne sais quoi – an interpretation that Alex Haslam, a professor of social and organisational psychology at the University of Queensland, takes issue with. “Actually what he says is: it’s about being regarded as having those things,” Haslam says.
Charisma, Haslam argues, is in the eye of the beholder, rather than an innate trait. “Is Anthony Albanese charismatic? Is Peter Dutton charismatic? It depends on who you ask. We treat charisma as if it’s a property or a thing that they possess, but it’s clearly based on our relationship with them,” he says.
“We perceive people as charismatic to the extent that they represent us, we see them as one of us, we see ourselves in them.”
Michael Platow, a professor of psychology at the Australian National University, agrees. “It’s not something that you are born with,” he says. “The idea that there’s something about you that was always predestined to get other people to engage with you and follow you is just wrong,” Platow says, referring to the “great man” theory that was popularised by historians in the 19th century, which assumed that leaders innately possessed traits that set them apart from the masses.
In Haslam and Platow’s book, The New Psychology of Leadership, co-authored with Prof Stephen Reicher, they characterise charismatic leaders as those who are most successful in creating a sense of shared social identity – a sense of “us-ness”. Leaders must articulate not only their policies to voters, Platow says, but also “a vision of us collectively. Politicians try to place themselves at the centre of that ‘us’.”
Platow cites Trump as an example of charisma being conferred by followers rather than an inherent quality of a leader. “There are a lot of people who think he’s their saviour, and … there are millions who don’t,” he says. “He’s trying to define what America is in particular terms … and he is succeeding in many ways in doing that for a subset of the population.”
One way researchers measure charisma is simply to ask people what they think of someone. “It’s subjective,” Platow concedes. “But in the end, voting is subjective.”
Loving winners, tall people and beers at the pub
Ample evidence supports the idea that charisma is not a fixed, innate trait. Studies show that success contributes to perceptions of charisma. Research has found that for a given description, a business executive is perceived as more charismatic if people are told the performance of their company improved. “If Anthony Albanese were to win this election, then his supporters would perceive him to be much more charismatic,” Haslam says.
A linked phenomenon in politics is the incumbency effect: “If the economy is doing well or if other macroeconomic factors are good, then people like who is currently in office, because they basically attribute the success to that person,” says Lisa Lu, a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales, whose dissertation focuses on leadership and charisma.
Success is only one ingredient in the secret sauce, however. One analysis of five Australian prime ministers from Gough Whitlam to John Howard, based on monthly public opinion polling, found that “Bob Hawke was the only one of the five to exhibit significant charisma; his approval rating was over 10 percentage points higher during his period of office than would otherwise have been expected by his economic or political performance.” Keating, it found, “was the least charismatic, by about the same margin”.
Central to Hawke’s public image was that of a quintessentially Australian beer-skolling, sports-loving larrikin. Charismatic leadership has been characterised by some researchers as being grounded in values, “beliefs and symbolism”, as well as emotive and expressive communication. It is unsurprising, then, that a 2020 survey of political scientists and historians ranked Hawke first among Australian prime ministers for “communication effectiveness”, as well as his “relationship with the electorate”. His overall performance as prime minister rated second overall after John Curtin.
“As we move into the election, watch how each candidate defines ‘us’, how they position themselves as being the ‘prototypical’ Australian,” Platow says. “It’s not just kissing babies, it’s working at Bunnings selling sausages … it’s having a beer at the pub.”
Perceptions of charisma are also bound up in factors an individual cannot change. How tall one is, for example: height is associated with greater charisma in male leaders, and US presidents have been much taller than the average American man. Some studies have found that followers attribute greater charisma to women than men, but Assoc Prof Jessica Flanigan has pointed out that these tracked perceived emotional intelligence rather than overall likability.
The historical dearth of female heads of state is “a product of the fact that we live in a sexist world”, Haslam believes. “When I was growing up, you were presented with almost no plausible female candidates that we were encouraged to perceive as charismatic … I think that’s different now.”
Dying for charisma?
Given charisma isn’t innate, what should a leader desperate to increase their appeal do? One sure-fire but drastic way is to die. Research co-authored by Haslam studied 48 heads of state who died in office between 2000 and 2013. The study found that the leaders were twice as likely to be described as charismatic in death.
Haslam attributes the effect to a posthumous focus on the leader’s social contributions over personal shortcomings. “You can think of all the things they did for us,” he says. “In a way, you get this very pure, undistilled image of them as a group member.”
In life, charisma can be taught, other research suggests. Associate Prof Philippe Jacquart of EM Lyon Business School and Prof John Antonakis of the University of Lausanne have identified nine rhetorical and three non-verbal strategies commonly used by leaders considered charismatic.
Looking at nomination speeches of US Democratic and Republican presidential candidates between 1916 and 2008, they measured use of the verbal strategies – including metaphors, stories and anecdotes, demonstrating moral conviction and sharing sentiments of the collective – as a marker of charisma. The more charismatic candidate, as defined by their model, won 23 out of 24 US presidential elections they studied.
Even a cursory survey of history’s autocrats – Hitler and Mussolini among them – and cult leaders like Jim Jones reveals the dark side of charisma. “It’s pretty obvious that in toxic groups, where they have those kinds of leaders, that’s going to be a problem,” Haslam says.
As Lu says, charisma is “a tool that can be used for good or for bad … even if you can develop it in people, that doesn’t necessarily mean everybody should.”
