Perceptions of charisma from thin slices of behavior predict leadership prototypicality judgments

Signaling theory suggests that people use cues transmitted by leaders to form impressions of charisma but the validity of these impressions remains unexplored. Here, we examined whether perceptions of charisma from thin slices of nonverbal behavior relate to inferences based on more information. We tested whether ratings of charisma from 5-, 15-, and 30-s clips (with no audio) of speakers delivering a message predicted evaluations of vision articulation and leadership prototypicality made from 60-s multimedia clips (with audio). The results indicated that thin-slice charisma judgments predicted the criterion scores for leadership prototypicality but not vision articulation from all of the 5-, 15-, and 30-s silent clips. The current data therefore suggest that thin slices of charisma can be valid indicators of leadership.