The art and science of being charismatic

bbc.com

32 points·ohjeez··5 comments

Talks about Hillary Clinton being "cold" and promotes Amy Cuddy's "power pose" pseudoscience. I find this to be an interesting, disappointing worldview.

In Bill Clinton's run for the presidency they used 'instant feedback' monitors to register audience likes and dislikes.

Bill was almost always liked-- he got high marks, no matter the subject. When the camera happened to include Hillary, the audience 'like factor' instantly plummeted. This is well documented in a book, I think it was George Stephanapolis's.

Some people can project likeability, some can't. It's not clear if it can be learned or not.

I think there's evidence that it _can_ be learned, with Steve Jobs as example #1.

On the other hand, it may not be _easily_ learned. Jobs went through a lot of changes in his life; perhaps this was one of the happier (or at least more useful) outcomes.

The way you've phrased this, it could be women sexually attracted to Bill that are annoyed to be reminded he's married. Similar to the cliche about young movie stars and musicians being told to hide their partners to avoid alienating their fans.

I was pretty surprised to see a BBC article link to power poses with no mention of the controversy and retractions. This seems like something a basic fact check should have picked up.

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