Being “magnetic” tends to sound like a fixed quality, something a person either has or doesn’t. Two very different studies suggest otherwise, pointing to two specific, learnable behaviors that measurably shift how likable and how charismatic a person comes across, no natural charisma required.
The clearest evidence on likability comes from a 1999 study by Tanya Chartrand and John Bargh, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In one of their experiments, trained confederates subtly mimicked participants’ posture and hand gestures during a conversation task, without the participants noticing or being told mimicry was happening, while a comparison group of participants interacted with confederates who didn’t mimic them. Afterward, participants who had been mimicked rated their conversation partner as more likable and rated the overall interaction as smoother, even though they had no conscious awareness that anything about the conversation had been engineered. The researchers described this as the “chameleon effect,” an automatic, largely unconscious tendency to mimic others that appears to function as a kind of social glue, and being on the receiving end of it reliably improved how a person was perceived.
A second study points to a different, more deliberate lever: specific, teachable communication techniques that shift how charismatic a person is rated by outside observers. In a 2011 study by John Antonakis, Marika Fenley, and Sue Liechti, published in Academy of Management Learning and Education, the researchers ran two separate experiments. In the field study, 34 mid-level managers were randomly assigned to either a charisma-tactics training program or a control condition, then rated by their coworkers three months later. In the lab study, 41 MBA students were trained in a specific set of verbal and nonverbal techniques, including using metaphors, storytelling, rhetorical questions, and confident, animated delivery, then videotaped giving a speech and rated by 135 independent judges six weeks afterward. In both experiments, the trained group was rated as significantly more charismatic than the untrained group, and higher charisma ratings predicted being seen as more suited for a leadership role. The behaviors weren’t vague personality traits, they were specific, identifiable techniques that could be taught and then reliably detected by strangers.
Together, these two studies suggest that magnetism isn’t one single quality but at least two distinct, learnable ingredients working on different levels. Chartrand and Bargh’s research shows that a largely automatic, physical behavior, subtly matching another person’s body language, can shift how likable someone seems without either party consciously registering why. Antonakis and colleagues’ research shows that a more deliberate, verbal skill set, specific storytelling and delivery techniques, can be trained and reliably raises how charismatic someone appears to strangers. One operates below conscious awareness, tuning how a conversation physically feels. The other operates through content and delivery, shaping how compelling someone’s ideas and presence come across. Both point away from the idea that magnetism is simply innate.
It’s worth being honest about what these two studies don’t establish. Chartrand and Bargh’s mimicry research was conducted in a controlled lab setting with confederates deliberately trained to mimic naturally and subtly, and overly obvious or poorly timed mimicry in real life could plausibly come across as strange or mocking rather than endearing, a distinction the original study wasn’t designed to test. Antonakis and colleagues’ charisma-training research showed real, measurable gains after structured training with specific techniques and practice, which means simply reading about the techniques, without the same kind of deliberate practice and feedback the study participants received, may produce smaller effects than what was measured.
Within those honest limits, the research offers a genuinely useful reframe of what magnetism is made of. It looks less like an inborn aura and more like a combination of subtle physical attunement to the person in front of you and specific, practicable communication techniques, both of which showed up as measurable, teachable skills rather than traits someone is simply born with or without.