Quick thinkers are charismatic

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-12/afps-qta120215.php

Public Release: 3-Dec-2015
Quick thinkers are charismatic
Association for Psychological Science

Charisma may rely on quick thinking, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The research shows that people who were able to respond more quickly to general knowledge questions and visual tasks were perceived as more charismatic by their friends, independently of IQ and other personality traits.

"Our findings show that social intelligence is more than just knowing the right thing to do," says psychological scientist William von Hippel of the University of Queensland in Australia. "Social intelligence also requires an ability to execute, and the quickness of our mind is an important component of that ability."

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The results showed that participants who were faster on the mental speed tasks were perceived as more charismatic, and this association remained after other factors, such as general intelligence and personality, were taken into account.

"Although we expected mental speed to predict charisma, we thought that it would be less important than IQ," says von Hippel. "Instead, we found that how smart people were was less important than how quick they were. So knowing the right answer to a tough question appears to be less important than being able to consider a large number of social responses in a brief window of time."

The researchers speculate that mental speed may also make it easier to quickly mask an inappropriate reaction and make humorous associations on the spot.

Contrary to the researchers' predictions, mental speed did not predict other social skills, such as being adept at handling conflict or interpreting others' feelings.

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