Charisma rests on personality traits that are themselves inherited

The argument

This argument proceeds through the components of charisma. What people respond to in a charismatic person is a cluster of traits: warmth, confidence, expressiveness, quickness, an ease in the presence of strangers, a willingness to be the centre of attention. Proponents argue that these are not skills but dispositions, and that dispositions of this kind run in families and show themselves long before any deliberate cultivation. The inference is straightforward. If charisma is constituted by traits that a person does not choose and did not acquire, then charisma is not chosen or acquired either. Proponents point out that the underlying traits are also notably resistant to change: a reserved person can learn to speak in public, prepare thoroughly and perform competently, and still not be magnetic, because what draws people is the apparent absence of effort. The effort shows. That is why training produces polish rather than charisma. Proponents accept that environment affects how much of a disposition gets expressed, and argue this does not touch the claim. A naturally expressive child who is encouraged will be more charismatic than one who is suppressed, but the encouragement is working on something that was there to be encouraged. Nothing comparable happens with a child who lacks the underlying temperament, however much they are pushed forward. Because charisma is composed of inherited personality traits that precede socialisation and resist deliberate alteration, this argument concludes, people are born with charisma.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who hold charisma to be learned reply that the components named are competences rather than dispositions: reading a room, timing a remark, telling a story that lands and asking the question that makes someone feel interesting all improve with use and are absent without practice. They add that the same person reads as charismatic in familiar company and inert among people whose references and rhythms they do not know, which an inherited trait would not do, since inherited traits do not switch off when the room changes.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Warmth, expressiveness, confidence and ease with strangers are offered as the components, and each is also something that improves with practice and varies with the company a person is in, so the list does not by itself favour inheritance over acquisition. [Rejecting P2] That these dispositions run in families is offered as evidence of temperament, but families share an environment as well as a descent. The premise needs the two separated and does not separate them. [Rejecting P3] That training cannot produce apparent effortlessness is asserted, and in every other domain effortlessness is the characteristic mark of a well-practised skill, which is a reason to doubt that it marks the absence of practice here.