Without socialisation, no amount of genetic advantage produces charisma

The argument

This argument puts the innate account to a test. If charisma were written into a person's inheritance, then it should appear regardless of circumstances, in the way that height or eye colour does. Proponents of the learned account argue that it plainly does not. A person who has had very little contact with others, or whose early social attempts met indifference or hostility, does not emerge charismatic however promising their temperament; they emerge hesitant, mistrustful of their own instincts and poor at reading other people. The point generalises beyond extreme cases. Proponents note that the same person can be charismatic in one setting and inert in another — fluent among people whose references, humour and rhythms they know, and lost among people whose they do not. An inherited trait would not switch off when the company changes. What does change is the stock of shared knowledge and practised convention the person can draw on, which is exactly what the learned account predicts to matter. Charisma, on this view, is a fit between a person's acquired social repertoire and the room they are in. Proponents argue that what the innate account is really noticing is a head start rather than a trait. A child who finds people easy will seek them out, get more practice, receive more encouragement and so become more fluent still — a cumulative advantage that looks like destiny from the outside but is ordinary skill acquisition running fast. Remove the practice and the advantage produces nothing. Because any dispositional head start requires socialisation to become charisma at all, and charisma varies with the setting in a way inherited traits do not, this argument concludes, people are not born with charisma.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who hold charisma to be inborn reply that needing an environment in which to appear is true of inherited traits generally and does not make them learned; height requires nutrition without becoming a skill. They argue that the setting-dependence cited shows only that charisma must be exercised in company, not that it is assembled from practice, and that the extreme cases of deprivation prove a necessary condition rather than identifying what distinguishes the magnetic from the merely well-socialised.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Manifesting across circumstances is a standard few inherited traits actually meet. Height depends on nutrition and temperament shows differently in different company, so a trait that needs an environment in order to appear is not thereby shown to be uninherited. [Rejecting P2] The observation that one person reads as charismatic in familiar company and not in unfamiliar company shows that expression varies with setting, not that the underlying disposition does. The premise draws a conclusion about origin from evidence about display. [Rejecting P3] That the acquired repertoire is what varies between those settings is asserted, and the competing explanation - that familiar company lets an inherited disposition show while unfamiliar company suppresses it - fits the same observation and is not addressed.