Advancing higher-education practice by analyzing and training students' vocal charisma: Evidence from a Danish field study

Abstract

Charismatic speaking skills, particularly those of the voice, are known to be an important asset of managers, politicians, and even teachers. Students have so far been less in the limelight in this regard, although modern collaborative-learning and oral-examination concepts suggest that vocal charisma can already be a decisive factor for study success as well. The present paper examines this question based on 82 electrical-engineering students. Their initial self-introductions in front of the other fellow students were analyzed using a new acoustic technology that translates 16 voice features into a total vocal charisma (PASCAL) score. Results show that these PASCAL scores are overall low (i.e. improvable) and positively correlated with the oral exam grades of both individual students and student teams. Moreover, the teams' PASCAL scores positively correlate with the per-formance in the "Marshmallow Challenge", i.e. a creative teamwork task. Additional in-depth analyses show that teams without any above-average charismatic student performed worst, but that teams with more than one above-average charismatic student struggled with leadership conflicts and solo actions. We interpret our findings as a strong plea for (vocal) charisma analysis to be integrated in higher-education practice both for managing team dynamics and performance and for increasing individual study success.