Experiments on charisma

Below you will find information regarding the experimental material we used for a field experiment and a series of laboratory experiments as documented here:

Antonakis, J., d’Adda, G., Weber, R., & Zehnder, C. (2021). Just words? Just speeches? On the economic value of charismatic leadership. Management Science. Download here

The paper was accepted on 22-Jun-2021; it should be on the journal website in due course.

Feel free to use any of our materials for research or teaching purposes, with correct attribution as per above working paper. The following HBR article may also be useful:

Field experiment

In this experiment, we hired workers to help us with a mail sorting task. Workers were randomized to one of three conditions. (a) fixed-wage with standard speech, (b) fixed-wage with standard speech plus possibility to earn extra money if workers pass a certain production threshold, and (c) fixed wage with charismatic speech. We observed the quality and quantity of work done (refer to working paper for details).

See below for a full version of the speeches

Standard Speech

(click here to view)

Charisma Speech

(click here to view)

To download (right click and “save link as”):
www.hec.unil.ch/jantonakis/noncharisma.wmv

To download (right click and “save link as”):
www.hec.unil.ch/jantonakis/charisma.wmv

Sous-titré en français: With French subtitles:

www.hec.unil.ch/jantonakis/French_noncharisma.wmv

Sous-titré en français: With French subtitles:

www.hec.unil.ch/jantonakis/French_charisma.wmv

Here is a short version for demonstration purposes with mark-up of tactics; we have clipped similar content from the speeches and play them one after the other.

Click here to view

To download (right click and “save link as”):
http://www.hec.unil.ch/jantonakis/SnippedCharisma.wmv

Note : Use Windows Movie Player or Quicktime Player to open.

Download the transcripts of the field experiment speeches in English or French

Lab experiment 1

Brief description: In this lab experiment, participants played a standard public goods game. They took decisions over 10 rounds with respect playing their endowment in a public or private account. Players are given 20 points as endowment each round (30 points = 1 Swiss Franc). Their earnings are determined by personal account points + .4*total points (of all group members) in the public account. Players observe decisions of group members after every round. We measure their beliefs (of what they think others will do) and their actual contributions. In this experiment we randomized participants to one of three groups (a) control (no speech), (b) standard speech and (c) charisma speech. For the conditions in which participants saw a speech, they viewed the speech individualy.

Standard Speech

(click here to view with English subtitles)

Charisma Speech

(click here to view with English subtitles)

To download (right click and “save link as”):
www.hec.unil.ch/jantonakis/PG_no_charisma_ST.mov

To download (right click and “save link as”):
www.hec.unil.ch/jantonakis/PG_charisma_ST.mov

Sans sous-titres en anglais: Without English subtitles:

www.hec.unil.ch/jantonakis/PG_no_charisma.mov

Sans sous-titres en anglais: Without English subtitles:

www.hec.unil.ch/jantonakis/PG_charisma.mov

Note : Use VLC Player to open.

Download the transcripts of the lab experiment speeches in English or French

Lab experiments 2 and 3

Brief description: The set-up is the same as the above; however, the speech is slightly altered and the experimentors donate money to the Lausanne children’s hospital as function of total player contributions. Here we have only two conditions, standard or charismatic speech (no control condition).

We ran this experiment with two independent pool of participants. In the first pool (experiment 2), participants viewed the relevant speech alone. In the second pool (experiment 3), participants watch the speech together in groups.

Standard Speech

(click here to view with English subtitles)

Charisma Speech

(click here to view with English subtitles)