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Charisma: It’s All in Your Head for a Reason

This is your brain on charisma.

It sure feels good to finally decide on something when we need to make a decision about it. And it feels good when we decide that we can trust in someone else. But did you ever wonder why? At what point does the feeling become the point of, rather than the result of, our decisions? An interesting study by a group of Danish brain researchers may give us some insight into that, and into why relinquishing decisions can feel powerfully comforting for some people and not for others.

First of all, let’s be honest: making decisions is risky, time consuming, anxiety-producing, fraught with failure, and prone to unintended consequences. And so many of the really important decisions are among the least clear to make. It’s no surprise that we might actually enjoy not having to do it, especially if we thought someone else could do it better.

And many of these decisions are social in that they require us to come together in groups and put our trust in leaders who advocate for the actions and ideas that unite and direct them. Being willing to “get on board” with a group and trust the leader is a necessary element of social life. Our ability to get anything done collectively – from families to religion and politics – depends on it. It’s no wonder (as Max Weber speculated at the dawn of Sociology) that followers need to perceive that their leaders have special powers. Read the rest of this entry »