Are the Verbal Charismatic Leadership Tactics Universal? An Empirical Investigation Across Cultures

Abstract

Cross-cultural studies identified charismatic leadership as universally desirable. Yet, what does it take to be perceived as charismatic across all cultures? Relying on objective markers of charisma signaling (commonly known as charismatic leadership tactics; CLTs) developed in Western cultures, this manuscript investigates whether the preference and appreciation for CLTs is universal or culturally contingent. Building on an empirical framework that avoids methodological issues related to linguistic comparability, we focus on a highly consequential leader selection setting—U.S. presidential elections—and test whether candidates’ use of CLTs affects voting choices of U.S. citizens with non-U.S. ancestries. Relying on secondary data covering 12 presidential elections and up to 23 different national ancestries, our findings suggest that CLTs tend to be appreciated by most cultural groups, albeit with some significant heterogeneity. Moreover, specific dimensions of national culture of origin (e.g., future orientation) predict the heterogenous response to leaders’ use of CLTs; however, these cultural dimensions are not always the ones documented by previous research on cross-cultural prototypes of charisma.