Oliver Niebuhr
Associate Professor of Communication and Innovation, Center for Industrial Electronics (CIE)
University of Southern Denmark

Breath, Body, Brilliance – How Multi-modal Biosignal Analyses Help Define and Refine Perceived Speaker Charisma

For a long time, charisma – i.e. the ability to inspire, motivate, and win over other people and get them to follow one’s own ideas and goals – was considered a mysterious talent of a few privileged people. Today we know that charisma is a signal – i.e. gradual, measurable, and learnable – and that the elements of non-verbal communication are among the strongest signal components. On this basis, the first part of the talk portrays the charismatic-speech analysis developed at the SDU and the associated (prosodic) training. In the second part, the talk examines some claims that have been haunting the advice literature for decades, such as that “belly breathing”, smiling, and an upright posture support charismatic speaking. The talk ends with an outlook on what charismatic speech or voice training could look like in the future and what role AI can and should play in this.