The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of imagery in a leader's speech on listeners' perceptions of the leader's charisma. A former US president's inaugural address was rewritten to create low and high imagery versions, and audio recordings of the two speeches were made. Participants were randomly assigned to high or low speech imagery conditions. After listening to the speech, they provided ratings on various summary leadership measures. The high imagery speech resulted in higher ratings of charisma than the low imagery speech. This effect was partially mediated by state positive affect (having controlled for trait affect levels). High imagery led to increased charisma ratings partially through increasing listeners' state positive affect relative to their trait affect baseline level. Implications for theory are addressed.
Rhetoric is an important method by which leaders convey their message to their followers. The role of rhetoric in leadership processes has been investigated in a number of contexts, including how the use of metaphor (Mio, Riggio, Levin, & Reese, 2005) and imagery (Emrich, Brower, Feldman, & Garland, 2001) impact ratings of charisma, how US presidential expressions of optimism about the economy influence actual economic performance (Wood, Owens, & Durham, 2005), and how the rhetorical construction of CEOs' speeches is related to their attitudes and strategies toward internationalization (Den Hartog & Verburg, 1997). Rhetorical devices may be essential to charismatic leadership, where the emotional and motivational effects of leaders' speeches are paramount (Shamir, Arthur, & House, 1994). Rhetoric and the articulation of a vision tend to play a larger role in determining charisma perceptions when leader and followers have little contact with each other (Shamir, 1995).
Imagery is one important rhetorical device. It is defined as content that elicits sensory experiences such as mental images in listeners. Imagery is theorized to elicit strong emotional reactions and high levels of attention, comprehension, and memory elaboration. Thus, followers may be more influenced by and more likely to act on a leader's message when it is high rather than low in imagery. Prior evidence suggests that speech imagery and perceptions of leader charisma are positively correlated (Emrich et al., 2001).
The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of imagery in a leader's speech on listeners' perceptions of charisma. Although this relationship has been demonstrated in a correlational study (Emrich et al., 2001), we are not aware of any research which has manipulated speech imagery to determine its causal relationship with charisma perceptions. In addition, though potential mediators have been theorized, we are aware of no work that empirically demonstrates a mediating process. Both of these issues have important implications for leadership practice and research. Our goal is to fill these gaps in the literature.
We begin by reviewing what the current leadership literature reveals about how charismatic leaders convey their visions to followers. We focus on imagery as an important component of charismatic rhetoric, and propose that affect is a key mediator of the relationship between speech imagery and perceptions of leader charisma. Finally, we present the results of our experiment and discuss the importance of our findings for leadership theory and practice.
