Charisma, can it be developed? Do some aspies lack it?

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... to re-address the original question....
Per the above block of text ><
If self-esteem can be developed, and if social skill and social endurance can be garnered(if not true extroversion), then I believe that charisma, as the common result of those items in large doses, can be developed.

There seems to be an overarching hypothesis here which is that there is a formula for making friends and influencing people, people with AS don't follow it, and thus they don't get noticed. A curious idea, and there may be some truth to it, but I feel that it is more significant for many people with AS that they do things which make other people uncomfortable. People who are considered uncharismatic or tactless are typically not just lacking something, they're doing something wrong.

Thinking back to when I was in my early teens and a bit more clueless, off-putting actions included: obsessively expressing interest in an object or person, not paying attention to personal hygiene, and having conversations that rapidly turn into lectures. These are just a few ways to alienate people from you, especially those that are not already comfortable with you. I believe that I still do this more than most, but in other more subtle ways, and see this as a big factor in why I went through college single. For example, being unintentionally rude with people (think of the other person's feelings before you say something), asking students about their subject in a firm and inquisitive fashion (which usually leads people to feel like they're in an oral exam), and appearing anxious.

So: if you haven't already considered that you may inadvertently be making people feel uncomfortable, try to think of aspects about yourself that you may find off-putting if you were to try to get along with with another person with those same aspects. Then iron those out, look for some friends in a few different places, and hopefully you'll be quirky enough to get noticed but at the same time not make other people uncomfortable. Which is a good combination even if it doesn't lead to you being exceptionally popular.

I wonder if there are different sorts of charisma that are appropriate for different sorts of situations. For instance, when it comes to interacting with professors or interviews, I tend to make a good impression. I come off as poised, confident, and enthusiastic. But when it comes to getting to know peers, I usually don't do very well. I come off as awkward and unidentifiably "weird." I know there are plenty of NTs who don't have interview social skills (why else would there be so much advice about it online?). But a lot of them also have more charisma around their peers. What do you think, is there more than one kind of charisma?

I think of aspies as the inverse of charisma. I can't imagine a charismatic aspie. Sorry if that offends. it just seems to me the complete opposite of everything that an aspie is. charismatics are like auric vampires. I see it almost in resonance and vibrations, and theirs are very external and powerful and their whole being is very inter-relational. it seems you would have to be extremely strong at reading faces, eyes, and body language to be charismatic.

I think you might be getting back to the "f***ing smart" issue here. Many aspies are well above-average in intelligence, and the reality of the situation may well be that when you're talking to professors is when you're talking your real peers, as opposed to just talking to people in your own age bracket. Unfortunately, a lot of people really HATE being in the company of someone they know is smarter than them, and I think most people sense this pretty accurately. It may well be that what you feel as "coming off as awkward and weird" is really just people trying to make you feel awkward and weird as a way of taking you down a peg...shifting the balance of power back in their favor. Sad but true - we live in an anti-intellectual age.

That was me who made that postulation.

I think he's right that there are 'different kinds' of charisma, in a sense. However I think it's also kinda missing the point. If you subscribe(as I do) to the notion that charisma follows from social aptitude, and good social performance, then if it's possible to be good at some social situations but not others, it would follow that you have charisma in some situations, and none in others.

As for anti-intellectualism - Have we ever been in an intellectual age, then?

You're right in your overlying point though... As is very obvious in my posts, I get kinda pedantic, long-winded, pseudo-academic, whatever.... But I've learned that people hate it when I get that way IRL. It's not that I want to make people think I'm smart or whatever... I just wanna talk about the stuff on my mind, and this is what I think about. Most other folks don't tend to want to talk like this, get into the details, toss theories back and forth, find critiques, argue insignificant points for the sake of exploration. It's tough to find people to do that with, outside the intarwebsels. Even if you know how to pick up new friends without much difficulty.

Aspiewifey, let's say for the sake of argument that social skills are discrete abilities inherent in people that allow them to project what they want to and understand what others project to them. Are you saying that if someone was too smart but had good social skills, they would still be made to feel weird/awkward? And would thus look as if they had poor social skills?

And I 100% agree with GoatOnFire about what charisma is (and how it's different from basic social skills).

Sound, I get your point that an overall socially skilled person can be good at some social skills but not others (just like a high-IQ person can be good at some parts of the IQ test but not others). I still wonder whether academic social skills and peer group social skills are particularly dissociable, perhaps because they require almost completely opposite things. For example, many of my peers cannot handle a typical university discussion section, although they are intelligent, because they don't seem to understand the expectation that they are supposed to talk in order to move the discussion along, even if they don't have some genius thing to say. So we sit there in awkward silence, even though the same people were total chatterboxes before the professor walked in. And when they think about going to a professor's office hours they freak out the way some of us might about talking on the phone or going to a loud party, because they have no clue what to say. Again, they think if they're not utter geniuses they can't say anything; they have a false or unclear understanding of what the expectations are. I've even talked to very socially skilled people about how difficult it is to present themselves well in an academic setting. The flipside is a little less consistent. I've met some academically socially skilled people who are also good with peers, and some who are not so good.

Boy, do I understand where you're coming from! I'm at a good university right now, but the number of people who find this sort of thing fun and relaxing is definitely in the minority. They can do it in class, but not necessarily when they're hanging out.

Oh, and I'm a girl, btw.

Yes. Even among my own circle of friends, if my train of thought leads me to subjects that are too academic I get those "oh-my-god-you-are-so-lame" eye rolls. Among people who are not my friends, I cannot tell you how many times I've been lashed at for "trying to sound smart," when I thought I was just talking normally.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say this makes me look like I have poor social skills (I'm NT by the way, and have never had trouble with the basic social communication dance) but I can still feel like one heck of an outsider.

And back to Sound: yes, I think the world used to be a more intellectually friendly place. There was a time when if you were sentenced to death being able to read was an automatic pardon, because the skill was too valuable to be wasted. We are going downhill, FAST. Watch Idiocracy...I think it's prophetic.

I think that many of us have more charisma than we realize. In my experience, the ASD individuals whom I know IRL tend to be very well liked. There is something attractive about someone who is quirky and perfectly comfortable doing his own thing. This is certainly a different breed of charisma, but I believe that it still counts. I think the problem that many of us have is that we feel alien and detatched and that we lack charisma. This destroys our confidence and hurts our chances of letting our charisma show.

Despite having a hobby of talking to myself in the mirror like a Sim, my charisma still is rough around the edges. Although I have heard this from many a person, getting out and observing social interaction is a good way to build charisma.

I think someone with Asperger's syndrome can develop a modicum of charisma by demonstrating:

• An intensely driven interest
• Visible passion about the interest and a willingness to convey this same passion to others
• A willingness to approach others
• A certain surety in one's actions: that one has a plan one is simply following through on
• A willingness to engage with and help others and to make an attempt to hear their story (active listening)

This is the most useful post in this thread

Don't trust anything else.

Charisma is a perception, nothing more. Just be yourself, if people find you charismatic then good. If they don't, then whatever. If you try to hard then that's not even "truely being charismatic". It comes naturally, just learn to socialize better and hold your own.

My mistake - Sorry if I assumed!

Thought it was hilarious... But I don't think it's really going that way...
As a bonus, it's unrealistic from an evolutionary standpoint. Takes too much time.

Not observing - Taking part!

Good call, actually, yeah. I agree. People see our differing, but intense, passions as odd, but it can still be engaging. You just gotta make sure it's two-way, and presented in fun enough way as to be entertaining to listen to(...which is kinda the tough part sometimes..).



You appear to be confusing interest in exploration of the topic for try-hard desperation.
At least give us your thought-out reasoning for why other ideas have less merit instead of sweeping, generalized, shallow dismissal. If I, for instance, am all wrong, then by all means say why.

Anyways, rolling it back to "It comes naturally" ignores the details of how this phenomenon works (or might work). And that's not useful. Charisma is not magic, and it can be better understood(if not fully).

I have seen your posts around and they are usually long, so I decided to see what kind of response I would get if I gave you a response with length. The result, a longer response with a graph. How do you manage to be so prolific?

Of course.

There is definitely a situational element, which I personally think is one of the worst complications to this topic.

As to why we choose who we choose to empower, I shall propose a hypothesis. I believe the arena of politics is a good example of a situation where a high level of charisma is paramount. In politics, one thing you will notice that many people seem to judge who they want to lead based on how many things they think the politician will do. They also want a stubborn leader who acts without taking much time to think because it makes the politician seems sure of himself, and people on the left side of the intelligence bell curve in particular are particularly susceptible to not have faith in someone who changes his mind on an issue. The masses want an uncompromising leader of action, it doesn't matter so much whether he's leading them off of a cliff as long as he is leading. People like to follow someone who seems to have big plans. Take Hitler for example, again.



This works to a degree on a less catastrophic level in smaller social arenas, too. Although I don't think it is the whole story, to at least some extent if you have interesting plans people will follow.



That wouldn't be my problem. I'm a former college basketball player, not a guard, either.

My critique of these.

This is aimed at the smaller stage, working a crowd is a different thing. Wouldn't the point of having charisma mean not having to do this?

I have the physical characteristics and the hygiene down. I'm not sure how good my wardrobe is, and anything to do with body language is hard. The list being enormous is the most discouraging thing.

This would not be very intuitive for me because I probably wouldn't respect a person like that. If you aren't losing anything there's no reason not to do small favors here and there if it's no problem for you. This just sounds like being a dick to me. It sounds selfish, which ironically, is something I have heard aspies accused of frequently.

It is a lot...

Very true.

Here I was just trying to differentiate smart from intelligent. To me, smart has an element of so called 'common sense' which many aspies are bad in. So I was suggesting that intelligent was a better word than smart to describe aspies, that was all.

I was throwing arbitrary numbers out there. It would be interesting to know what the real numbers would be.

Yes, there does seem to be that overarching hypothesis. I think the overarching hypothesis is situationally dependent on how the formula is applied, or even many different situational formulas. In the case of tact I would agree with you. Charisma I believe is tied so closely to the base personality it is harder to correct. I think part of it is making other people uncomfortable, another part of it I think is being able to read when someone else is comfortable and then timing when and knowing how to act on it.

People hate being told that they can't do something. However, I consider politics to be somewhere where charisma is important. And I think you would be hard pressed to find an example of an elected head of a country who has AS. I'm sure there are examples of ASers inheriting leadership over a country, and those might be interesting examples to study.

To me, charisma seems to all boil down to a personal magnetism. I think it most certainly is affected by the situation. If I were to break charisma into two groups, I would break them between interpersonal charisma which is attracting individual people, and working a crowd which is getting a crowd of people to do what you want them to do. In the case of a professor, if you are his student, it shows him that you are listening to him and respect him if you are talking to him academically and it makes him happy. In an interview setting, it is also more likely to get a better response to a academic discussion relevant to the job because odds are they want to make sure you are competent in an interview. However, in normal social settings, if you are talking academically about a narrow and specialized field of study you will likely bore the s**t out of the other people. When talking about academic subjects I would be careful to make sure you are talking to others who have a similar academic focus. It sounds like you have plenty of self esteem, Aspiewifey. Not a bad thing, but remember that there is such a thing as an intelligent NT.

I'm not sure about the 3rd and the 5th ones. To me, with charisma, it's about having something about yourself that makes others approach you, or want to listen to you. Not to say that those aren't good social skills, just I'm not sure they are germane to charisma.

Arrrgh! I wanted a conversation about something funky fresh. That doesn't qualify. Please read the conversation a little more carefully.

The dumb people do reproduce faster, however, I think there is a limit. There will be a point where a portion of the population will be so dumb it could be cleaned out by having the remaining smart people organize a jump in a swimming pool with an electrical appliance day. The people who are smart enough not to participate will be the remaining gene pool. Or something like that.

Occam's Razor can be applied here! The most simple explanation: I have nothing better to do right now with my day! =op
Or, more appropriately, I find these discussions more fun than, say, video games, and whatnot. I suspect that social dynamics are a bit of an 'aspie interest' of mine. I never tire of talking about it, I never tire of reading about it, not necessarily because I seek to apply it (although, I do), but because I just... LIKE it. lol It's nearly the most fascinating thing in the world, to me. It's why I post in this sub-forum so much.

And my life is really in limbo at the moment. TONS of free time.

I believe this complication is made even more relevant in this thread, because you seem to be particularly interested in politics, which is, IMO, a whole 'nother realm of charisma. The rules of ever-day charisma don't apply to political charisma. Marketing principles have more relevance in politics than charisma does, IMO.
When I voted for Obama, I did not vote for Obama the person, I voted for the idea of Obama. As did everyone who never met the guy. I really don't think this is an expression of Charisma in a lot of ways. Somewhat, it is, but mostly not.

All the stuff I was detailing out in that prior post was from the standpoint of a person being just an every day person, not a politician. There's no relevance between what I was talking about vs politics.

Now, if you started up a thread that was all about charisma in the context of politics... like, say, Bush vs Obama, then maybe we could get into those details really good! But it's so far removed from charisma as we experience in every day life with one-another....

I wasn't exactly directed at you, more like people in general. I can't presume to know what's right in your case. But there's patterns with people in general, particularly the common LSE aspie on the love & dating sub-forum. So, note that from here on out, assume I'm not talking about you specifically.

Moreover, it's just a factor, one of many. Lacking or exemplifying one factor does not necessarily imply a massive impact on the outcome. Like so many other social topics, it's a cumulative thing.

For the purposes of regional or national politics you're sorta right. The relevance is less.
But, again, charisma, as it applies to the 99% of humans who aren't politicians, follows from habits and behaviors. If you compromise those sources, then charisma begins to drop over time as peoples' perceptions shift.

Yeah, a bit, but don't forget that this is all cumulative, and not about specific requirements. Every check box is a point, which check boxes are full is less relevant... If we suck at body language, extra effort elsewhere will compensate!
Yeah, I knew this point would take flak, and for good reason... It's a tough concept to convey in any palatable words, and spoken coarsely, it flies in the face of peoples' sensibilities.

But the thing I've learned in recent years more and more is that we teach people how to treat us through every action we make, and every word we utter. We give off small cues in everything we do. Sometimes it's subtle, like posture - bad posture tends to teach people to expect less forthright behavior. Some things are overt, like allowing people to interrupt us - if you allow people to create a habit of interrupting you, and you'll be interrupted all the time, and the interrupter takes subverts you on the hierarchy.

Moreover, there's a line between acting with self respect and requiring respect, versus acting like a dick. It's shifty, it's blurry, but if you don't get up toward that line, you will lack charisma, because you will garner, and be afforded, less respect - perhaps less than you deserve. The less respect one has, the less prone people are to granting one charisma.

The items I specifically listed were things that I see happen a lot, and things that I did myself, such as habitual unnecessary apology. So although it may appear that I'm proposing one to act in an extreme manner, I'm not. My goal is to point out things to think about. Like the relative value of an apology if it is plentiful and casually expected, or a tendency to back down too often when someone confronts another IRL, or to give and give and give and give unbidden while wondering why you receive little in return. These things are each a big deal, when it comes to interpersonal charisma. Actually, they're huge. And they fit together according to a larger pattern, that it pays to proactively seek the respect from others if you deserve more. Who else is gonna do that for you?

This is especially true if you're coming from a history of undermining yourself, and are 'starting over' at a relatively lower place.

So yeah, that's some of the idea behind all that...

Awwww crap, another round of semantics!
I gotta tell ya, though, those definitions you're running are a whole 'nother rabbit hole. Best avoid that for now.
SERIOUSLY!! God, if only we could break this down into numbers! Then we'd rule the world!

I disagree with that last bit! 'Base Personality' ... That's another semantics problem, I'm thinkin. But from what I gather, what you're calling base personality, I'd call habits. Although in the end, I agree, tons of this stuff is hard to change because it's so ingrained.


I disagree. As a working example of #3, if someone approaches me with a genuine desire to be friendly, without ulterior motives, chances are pretty damn good that I'm gonna like that person. Assuming something doesn't undermine the person, I'm gonna be interested in them, and what they said, because they did something so personally/socially pleasing. I have created a positive bias for this person in my mind. *BLING!* +1 Charisma point.

Now, perhaps that appears to have only affected a single person, me, and hardly creates an 'aura' about that person. However, the trick is in the after-effects. Since *I* have that bias toward him, people will notice that bias. They will see that I act in a way that empowers him - letting him speak over me, laughin at his jokes, watching him, speaking well of him, etc. When people watch me, they observe that I am proof of this person's worth. And people think, "well, Miles likes him, maybe he's not bad," BLING! +1 Charisma point.

So it's a snowball effect kind of thing.