Understanding the effects of charismatic leadership on followers’ perceptions, behavior, and cognition

Charismatic leaders successfully exert their influence to protect human rights (e.g., Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Martin Luther King Jr.), coordinate actions during crises such as climate change (e.g., Yvon Chouinard or Greta Thunberg), or establish political agendas (e.g., Barack Obama or Margaret Thatcher). They are extraordinarily successful at motivating and guiding followers in pursuing a shared goal by convincingly communicating their values and demonstrating that they understand followers’ concerns, emotions, and needs. Capturing people’s attention using exceptional rhetoric, they direct the actions of those who voluntarily submit themselves to the goals and guidance of the leader. Despite their significant influence on the fate of organizations, societal movements, and whole nations, the processes underlying charismatic leaders’ effectiveness remain largely unknown. The central theme of the present dissertation was to study the potential underlying mechanisms of this effectiveness from a cognitive psychology perspective. Specifically, the thesis examines how followers process information from particularly charismatic leaders. Across all studies, the context of the climate change crisis as a leadership setting was utilized. Four empirical chapters present evidence demonstrating how charismatic leadership affects information processing in the behavioral, cognitive, and perceptual domain. Among the most notable findings are that charismatic leaders reduced memory for environmental facts (Chapter 2), increased reading times for information (Chapter 4), and increased self-reported engagement with message content (Chapter 5). The dissertation contributes to incorporating cognitive research methods into the study of leadership and provides insights into the underlying cognitive mechanisms of charismatic leadership.