How versatility performance influences perception of charismatic speech
A study on two Israeli politicians
The concept of vocal charisma has changed in the past decades from something that people have to something that people do, thereby stimulating research on how vocal charisma can be created and improved. Broadening the perspective on vocal charisma beyond the speaker’s performance itself to the context of the speech, we conducted acoustic-prosodic analyses of public speeches of two prominent Israelian politicians – Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz. The speech material consisted of 311–516 prosodic phrases per politician from the election campaigns 2019–2020 and, crucially, was balanced so as to include an equal number of pre- and post-election speeches. Results show a superiority of Netanyahu over Gantz in almost all facets of vocal charisma, although Gantz caught up over time. Moreover, unlike Gantz, Netanyahu showed a strong adaptation of his vocal charisma patterns to before- and after-election contexts. Scrutinizing this versatility difference, an additional perception experiment with 42 listeners and excerpts from the two politicians’ speeches was carried out. Results show that Netanyahu’s speech excerpts were, unlike those of Gantz, mainly rated as more charismatic in those contexts in which they were performed. Gantz’ post-election speech excerpts, by contrast, were primarily rated as not fitting into that context, i.e., as unfolding their charisma better in a pre-election context. Moreover, listeners also rated Netanyahu as overall more charismatic than Gantz. The combined production and perception evidence suggests the relevance of context in the evaluation and interpretation of vocal charisma signals.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Charisma: Definition and research
- 1.2The Israeli case
- 1.3Motivation and questions
- 2.Acoustic analysis
- 2.1Speech material
- 2.2Prosodic-feature extraction
- 2.3Derived vocal charisma scores
- 2.4Results of the acoustic analysis
- 2.5Interim discussion
- 3.Perception experiment
- 3.1Participants
- 3.2Stimuli
- 3.3Procedure
- 3.4Results
- 3.5Interim discussion
- 4.General discussion
- 4.1Theoretical implications
- 4.2Limitations and suggestions for future research
- 5.Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
References (68)
Amari, Y., Okada, S., Matsumoto, M., Sadamitsu, K., & Nakamoto, A.
(
2021,
July).
Multimodal
Analysis of Client Persuasion in Consulting Interactions: Toward Understanding Successful
Consulting. In:
G. Meiselwitz (Eds.)
Social
Computing and Social Media: Applications in Marketing, Learning, and Health. HCII 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer
Science (pp. 29–40),
12775
1. Springer, Cham.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Antonakis, John, Marika Fenley & Sue Liechti
(
2011)
Can charisma be taught? Tests of two interventions.
Academy of Management Learning & Education 101, 374–396.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Antonakis, J., Bastardoz, N., Jacquart, P., & Shamir, B.
(
2016)
Charisma:
An ill-defined and ill-measured gift.
Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and
Organizational
Behavior,
3
1, 293–319.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Babcock-Roberson, M. E. & Strickland, O. J.
(
2010)
The Relationship Between Charismatic Leadership, Work Engagement, and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors.
The Journal of Psychology, 144:3, 313–326.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Berger, S., Niebuhr, O., & Brem, A.
(
2020)
Of
voices and votes: Phonetic charisma and the myth of Nixon’s radio victory in his first 1960 TV debate with
Kennedy. In
M. Elmentaler, &
O. Niebuhr (Eds.),
An
den Rändern der
Sprache (Vol. 121, pp. 109–145). Peter Lang.
Kieler Forschungen zur Sprachwissenschaft Vol. 12.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Biadsy, F., Rosenberg, A., Carlson, R., Hirschberg, J., & Strangert, E.
(
2008)
A
cross-cultural comparison of American, Palestinian, and Swedish perception of charismatic
speech. In
Proceedings of the 4th Speech Prosody
Conference (Vol. 371, p. 579), Campinas, Brasil 2008
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Boersma, P.
(
2001)
Praat,
a system for doing phonetics by computer.
Glot
International 5:9/10, 341–345.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bosker, H. R.
(
2017)
The
role of temporal amplitude modulations in the political arena: Hillary Clinton vs. Donald
Trump.
Proceedings of Interspeech
2017 (pp. 2228–2232).
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Brem, A., Niebuhr, O.
(
2021)
Dress
to Impress? On the Interaction of Attire with Prosody and Gender in the Perception of Speaker
Charisma. In:
Weiss, B.,
Trouvain, J.,
Barkat-Defradas, M.,
Ohala, J. J. (Eds.)
Voice
Attractiveness. Prosody, Phonology and
Phonetics. Springer, Singapore.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Brouwers, M. A. J.
(
2008)
The
influence of the auditory environment on the emotional perception of
speech. Thesis, TU EInhoven, The Netherlands.
Campbell, N., & Mokhtari, P.
(
2003)
Voice
quality: the 4th prosodic dimension. In
15th
ICPhS (pp. 2417–2420).
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Caspi, A., Bogler, R., & Tzuman, O.
(
2019) “
Judging
a Book by Its Cover”: The Dominance of Delivery Over Content When Perceiving Charisma.
Group
& Organization
Management,
44
(6), 1067–1098.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Chen, L., Feng, G., Joe, J., Leong, C. W., Kitchen, C., & Lee, C. M.
(
2014)
Towards
automated assessment of public speaking skills using multimodal
cues. In
Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on
Multimodal
Interaction (pp. 200–203), New York, NY: ACM.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
De Jong, N. H., & Wempe, T.
(
2009)
Praat
script to detect syllable nuclei and measure speech rate automatically.
Behavior research
methods,
41
(2), 385–390.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
D’Errico, F., Niebuhr, O., & Poggi, I.
(
2019)
Humble
voices in political communication: A speech analysis across two
cultures. In:
Misra, S. et al. (Eds.)
Computational
Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2019. ICCSA 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer
Science (pp. 361–374), vol. 116201. Springer, Cham.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
D’Errico, F., Signorello, R., Demolin, D., & Poggi, I.
(
2013)
The
perception of charisma from voice: A cross-cultural study.
Proceedings of the Humaine
Association Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent
Interaction (pp. 552–557). Geneva, Switzerland, IEEE.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Dilley, L. C., & Pitt, M. A.
(
2010)
Altering
context speech rate can cause words to appear or disappear.
Psychological
Science,
21
(11), 1664–1670.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Donovan, R. J., & Rossiter, J. R.
(
1982)
Store
atmosphere: an environmental psychology approach.
Journal of
retailing,
58
(1), 34–57.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Dow Jr, T. E.
(
1969)
The theory of charisma.
The Sociological Quarterly, 10(3), 306–318.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Fischer, K., Niebuhr, O., Jensen, L. C., & Bodenhagen, L.
(
2020)
Speech
melody matters – How robots profit from using charismatic speech.
ACM Transactions on
Human-Robot
Interaction
9
(1), 1–21.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Friend, T.
(
2005)
Animal
talk: Breaking the codes of animal language. Simon and Schuster.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Glaser, J., & Salovey, P.
(
1998)
Affect
in electoral politics.
Personality and Social Psychology
Review,
2
1, 156–172.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gregory Jr, S. W., & Gallagher, T. J.
(
2002)
Spectral
analysis of candidates’ nonverbal vocal communication: Predicting US presidential election
outcomes.
Social Psychology
Quarterly, 298–308.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gutnyk, A., Niebuhr, O., & Gu, W.
(
2021)
Speaker
Charisma Analyzed through the Cultural Lens. In
2021 12th
International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing
(ISCSLP) (pp. 1–5). IEEE.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hanauska & Leßmöllmann
(
2022)
Persuasion in Science Communication: empirical findings on scientific
weblogs.
Special Issue on What Influences Influence: How Aspects of Context and Medium
Influence the Persuasiveness of Discourse, Interaction Studies (in this volume).
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Heldner, M.
(
2011)
Detection
thresholds for gaps, overlaps, and no-gap-no-overlaps.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of
America,
130
(1), 508–513.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Helmer, A.
(
2019,
March 10).
10.בחירות 2019 – גנץ לא היה עובר ראיון
עבודה...! [video]. YouTube.
[URL]
Hiroyuki, T., & Rathcke, T. V.
(
2016)
Then,
what is charisma? The role of audio-visual prosody in L1 and L2 political speeches.
Proceedings
of the 12th Conference of Phonetik und Phonologie im deutschsprachigen
Raum (pp. 1–3), Munich, Germany.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hirschberg, J. B., & Rosenberg, A.
(
2005)
Acoustic/prosodic
and lexical correlates of charismatic speech.
Proceedings of Proceedings of
Eurospeech’05, Lisbon, Portugal 2005
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Jokisch, O., Iaroshenko, V., Maruschke, M., & Ding, H.
(
2018)
Influence
of age, gender and sample duration on the charisma assessment of German speakers.
Proceedings
of the 29. Konferenz Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung
(ESSV2018), 1–8.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Juslin, P. N., & Laukka, P.
(
2003)
Communication
of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: Different channels, same
code? Psychological
Bulletin,
129
(5), 770–814.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Kimani, E., Murali, P., Shamekhi, A., Parmar, D., Munikoti, S., & Bickmore, T.
(
2020,
October).
Multimodal
Assessment of Oral Presentations using HMMs. In
Proceedings of the
2020 International Conference on Multimodal
Interaction (pp. 650–654).
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Klein, U.
(
2019)
‘King
Bibi’ Explores How Benjamin Netanyahu Became Unbeatable.
Haaretz.
[URL]
Landgraf, R., Köhler-Kaeß, J., Lüke, C., Niebuhr, O., & Schmidt, G.
(
2016)
Can
you hear me now? Reducing the Lombard effect in a driving car using an In-Car Communication
system. In Proc. Speech
Prosody (pp. 479–483).
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Livnat, Z., & Lewin, B. A.
Marques, C., Moreno, S., Luís Castro, S., & Besson, M.
(
2007)
Musicians
detect pitch violation in a foreign language better than non-musicians: behavioral and electrophysiological
evidence.
Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience,
19
(9), 1453–1463.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Michalsky, J., & Niebuhr, O.
(
2019)
Myth
busted? Challenging what we think we know about charismatic speech.
AUC
PHILOLOGICA 2019(2), 27–56.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mixdorff, H., & Amir, N.
(
2002)
The
Prosody of Modern Hebrew-A Quantitative Study. In
Proceedings of
Speech Prosody 2002, International Conference. sp02_511.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Morrill, T., Baese-Berk, M., Heffner, C., & Dilley, L.
(
2015)
Interactions
between distal speech rate, linguistic knowledge, and speech environment.
Psychonomic bulletin
&
review,
22
(5), 1451–1457.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mualem, O., & Lavidor, M.
(
2015)
Music
education intervention improves vocal emotion recognition.
International Journal of Music
Education,
33
(4), 413–425.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Nagano, M., Ijima, Y., & Hiroya, S.
(
2021)
Impact
of Emotional State on Estimation of Willingness to Buy from Advertising Speech.
Proc. 22nd
International Interspeech
Conference (pp. 2486–2490), Brno, Czech Republic.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Niebuhr, O.
(
2021)
Relations
between Speech Sciences and Industry. In
Text of the Luso-Brazilian
Association of Speech Sciences.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Niebuhr, O., Brem, A., Michalky, J., Neitsch, J.
(
2020)
What
makes business speakers sound charismatic? A contrastive acoustic-melodic analysis of Steve Jobs and Mark
Zuckerberg.
Cadernos de
Linguística
1
(1), 1–40.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Niebuhr, O., Neitsch, J., Michalsky, J.
(
2020)
Acoustic
Charisma Profiling – Towards the Digitization of Rhetoric.
Akustik
Journal
2
(20), 7–22.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Niebuhr, O. & Neitsch, J.
(
2020)
Digital
Rhetoric 2.0: How to Train Charismatic Speaking with Speech-melody Visualization
Software. In:
Karpov, A.,
Potapova, R. (Eds.)
Speech
and Computer. SPECOM 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer
Science, vol. 123351. Springer, Cham.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Niebuhr, O., S. Tegtmeier, & T. Schweisfurth
(
2019)
Female Speakers Benefit More Than Male Speakers From Prosodic Charisma Training – A Before-After Analysis of 12-Weeks and 4-h Courses.
Frontiers in Communication 41, 1–12.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Niebuhr, O., & Skarnitzl, R.
(
2019)
Measuring
a speaker’s acoustic correlates of pitch – but which? A contrastive analysis based on perceived speaker
charisma.
Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic
Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 1–5.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Niebuhr, O., A. Brem, & J. Voße
(
2016)
What makes a charismatic speaker? A computer-based acoustic-prosodic analysis of Steve Jobs’ tone of voice.
Computers in Human Behavior 641, 366–382.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Niebuhr, O., Thumm, J., Michalsky, J.
(
2018)
Shapes
and timing in charismatic speech – Evidence from sounds and melodies.
Proc. 9th International
Conference on Speech Prosody
2018, 582–586, Poznań, Poland.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Niehof, J. and Niebuhr, O.
(
2022)
What’s pitch got to do with it? – The connection between speech prosody and investor-pitch success. Proc. 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation, Sonderborg, Denmark, 1–5.
Pell, M. D., Paulmann, S., Dara, C., Alasseri, A., & Kotz, S. A.
(
2009)
Factors
in the recognition of vocally expressed emotions: A comparison of four languages.
Journal of
Phonetics, 37(4), 417–435.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Pfitzinger, H. R., Amir, N., Mixdorff, H., & Bösel, J.
(
2011)
Cross-language
Perception of Hebrew and German Authentic Emotional
Speech. In
ICPhS (pp. 1586–1589).
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rosenberg, A., & Hirschberg, J.
(
2009)
Charisma
perception from text and speech.
Speech
Communication,
51
(7), 640–655.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Scherer, S., Layher, G., Kane, J., Neumann, H. & Campbell, N.
(
2012)
An
audiovisual political speech analysis incorporating eye-tracking and perception
data.
Proceedings of the 8th ELRA Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, LREC
2012,
May 23–25 2012, Istanbul, Turkey, 1114–1120.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Seppälä, E.
(
2017)
Charisma
is a skill, not a gift – a Stanford psychologist shares 6 ways to build it.
Business
Insider. Retrieved from
[URL]
Shadur, D.
(Director) (
2018)
King
Bibi: The life and performances of Benjamin Netanyahu [Documentary
film], Israel. Website:
[URL]
Shamir, B.
(
1994)
Ideological
position, leaders’ charisma, and voting preferences: Personal vs. partisan elections.
Political
Behavior,
16
(2), 265–287.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Shukrun-Nagar, P.
(
2013)
Election
Discourse. In:
Khan, G. (Ed.).
Encyclopedia
of Hebrew language and
linguistics (pp. 800–806). Leiden: Brill.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Strangert, E., & Gustafson, J.
(
2008)
What
makes a good speaker? subject ratings, acoustic measurements and perceptual
evaluations. In:
Proceedings of INTERSPEECH
2008 (pp. 1688–1691), The Ninth Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, Brisbane, Australia.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Tegtmeier, S., Niebuhr, O. & Schweisfurth, T.
(
2021)
How
Money Talks: Speech Melody and Venture Evaluation. Available
at SSRN:
[URL] or
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Towler, Annette J.
2003 Effects of charismatic influence training on attitudes, behavior, and performance.
Personnel Psychology 561, 363–381.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Touati, P.
(
1993)
Prosodic
aspects of political rhetoric.
ESCA workshop on
prosody, 168–171.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Van de Ven, M. A. M., Tucker, B., & Ernestus, M. T. C.
(
2009)
Semantic
context effects in the recognition of acoustically unreduced and reduced words. INTERSPEECH
2009, 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication
Association (pp. 1867–1870), Brighton,
United Kingdom, September 6–10, 2009.
Wörtwein, T., Chollet, M., Schauerte, B., Morency, L.-P., Stiefelhagen, R., and Scherer, S.
(
2015)
Multimodal
public speaking performance assessment. In
Proc. of the 2015 ACM on
international conference on multimodal
interaction (pp. 43–50), ACM.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Xu, Y.
(
2013)
ProsodyPro –
a tool for large-scale systematic prosody analysis.
Tools and Resources for the Analysis of
Speech Prosody (TRASP
2013) (pp. 7–10), Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Aix-en-Provence, France.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Ynet
(
2020,
January 22).
נתניהו מחקה את בני גנץ
מגמגם [video]. YouTube.
[URL]
Cited by (3)
Cited by 3 other publications
Fischer, Kerstin & Oliver Niebuhr
2023.
Which Voice for which Robot? Designing Robot Voices that Indicate Robot Size.
ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction 12:4
► pp. 1 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Niebuhr, Oliver & Ingo Siegert
2023.
A digital “flat affect”? Popular speech compression codecs and their effects on emotional prosody.
Frontiers in Communication 8
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Rodero, Emma
2022.
Effectiveness, Attractiveness, and Emotional Response to Voice Pitch and Hand Gestures in Public Speaking.
Frontiers in Communication 7
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.