Death becomes us! Rethinking leadership charisma as a social inference

We contribute a novel perspective to the discussion of charismatic leadership, which has revolved around charisma as either a set of personality traits or followers’ attributions. We depart from both arguments via a social identity approach that offers an explanation to why followers’ perceptions of leadership charisma can increase after the leader’s death. The chapter summarizes three studies that provide evidence for charisma as a social inference: We propose that leadership charisma is not bound to a leader’s existence and behavior but may emerge from followers’ perceptions of him or her as “being one” and “strongly fused” with the group they led. We conclude with implications that these findings impose on future research.