Charisma and the Heart of the Sleuths
I decided I want to talk about Yosuke and his charisma. I feel like Yu’s charisma is given a lot of focus, but Yosuke’s not so much.
I call Yosuke the heart of the Investigation Team as he’s not only the founder, but precisely because of his incredible charisma. But what is charisma in the first place? It’s actually really difficult to measure and define, but Konstantin Tskhay tries to define it in his studies.
Because previous research suggested that charisma is marked by influence (e.g., Avolio & Bass, 1994; Bass, 1985), affiliation, and positive emotions (Conger & Kanungo, 1988), as well as expressiveness, charisma should be positively correlated with both dominance/competence and warmth dimensions within the circumplex models (same quadrant as extraversion). Thus, the circumplex models can be used to additionally contextualize individual differences in charisma.
Furthermore, given that prior researchers conceptualized charismatic leaders as framing followers’ emotions via emotional display and that social psychological literature emphasizes the role of positive emotions in forming everyday relationships (see Keating, 2011; Shiota, Campos, Keltner, & Hertenstein, 2004 for review; see also Friedman et al., 1980), I proposed that charismatic people would convey a positive disposition to others, thereby setting a pleasant tone in everyday interactions. For example, charismatic individuals may project the image of warmth (Fiske et al., 2007) and trustworthiness (Keating, 2002; Keating & Heltman, 1994; Todorov, Pakrashi, & Oosterhof, 2009), thereby seeming more approachable. Furthermore, charismatic individuals’ ability to understand, manipulate, and react to other people’s emotions in everyday situations—otherwise known as emotional intelligence—may attract people to charismatics (Hareli et al., 2009).
We see Yosuke up to this very frequently, like the example mentioned above. He's the guy who breaks the somber mood and suddenly gets everyone going from serious to completely joyful in a matter of seconds. And let this be contextualized with the fact that the team has just discovered the identity of the Midnight Channel Killer, leading to them being highly stressed and easily emotional as anger towards them is on high.
He’s comic relief, but he’s very good at it. He emphasizes the relief portion really well.
Yosuke is naturally a bit of a clown in general, actually. He's often getting up to goofy shenanigans that can occasionally lead to trouble (such as him making Kanji feel insecure during the camping trip, one of his few bad moments), but he also cracks jokes at weird times. But he’s also the main tension-breaker of the team. If he’s genuinely upset and unable to calm down, then the situation is dire. It’s why the scene where he and Naoto argue to kill Namatame works so well. Yosuke of all people is the one to be so adamant about killing him, and Naoto even is the one to come up with the idea. The two people who usually would be able to stop this from happening are the ones calling for it.
And Yosuke is incredibly kind and open to connection. This is actually another facet of charisma even if not the main one, as one of the main judges of perceived trustworthiness is open kindness and friendliness, which Yosuke frequently conveys.
Although warmth and competence dimensions emerge consistently, considerable evidence suggests that warmth judgments are primary: warmth is judged before competence, and warmth judgments carry more weight in affective and behavioral reactions. From an evolutionary perspective, the primacy of warmth is fitting because another person’s intent for good or ill is more important to survival than whether the other person can act on those intentions. Similarly, morality (warmth) judgments determine approach–avoidance tendencies, so they are the fundamental aspect of evaluation [8,9] and, therefore, precede competence–efficacy judgments.
Take, for example, the scene at the beginning of the game where he invites Yu to Junes, celebrating his arrival at Inaba, being the second person to befriend Yu, after Chie. Said warmth and generosity is part of what leads Yu to be so quick to become close to Yosuke as he learns to adapt to Inaba. Yosuke is outright the very first Social Link Yu makes there at all, signifying how much their shared drive and openness to each other after Yosuke becomes a Persona user means to Yu.
You can also ask Teddie, who he pretty much wholesale adopts as his younger brother. It’s to the point my posts on the latter are tagged “Teddie Hanamura.” Furthermore, in dungeon dialogue with Yukiko at low Social Link ranks with her, he can ask her if she wants to work at Junes to get more money.
This kindness leads to him being deeply trusted by the group, and makes it easier for him to connect to others around him. It helps that he makes it clear on multiple occasions how observant he is and how it allows him to make accurate predictions on the other Investigation Team members. He shows an incredibly strong understanding of Yu, for example, as he’s the one to actually head to Junes to meet Yu upon realizing the latter probably went into the TV to see the Midnight Channel Killer after their identity is revealed.
Probably my favorite example of how much the group trusts him and how well he knows them is completely blink and you miss it, not to mention incredibly surprising considering the context of the scene. During the camping trip, Yosuke pulls a strange prank on Yukiko and Chie where he attempts to convince them to swim. Upon them mentioning they forgot their swimsuits, Yosuke just hands some new ones to them for them to try on. It’s an uncomfortable moment for Yukiko and Chie, who get back at him by throwing him, Yu, and a particularly unlucky Kanji into the creek. And then Morooka throws up in it.
Now, this on its own doesn’t signal the trust and understanding Yosuke conveys, it more gives them a reason to trust him less, and resent the swimsuits. However, the beach trip actually shows this didn’t happen. Yukiko and Chie both choose to use the swimsuits Yosuke gifted them, rather than use any other ones, which signifies that they, shockingly, genuinely like the swimsuits and therefore hold no hard feelings over the prank that it came from whatsoever. This further implies Yosuke understands their fashion tastes well enough to know what they'd like. They didn’t see that moment as a betrayal at all, even though they understandably weren’t comfortable, it was just a mere annoyance. That is incredibly difficult to pull off considering Yosuke’s prank.
We also see it here in this scene: considering Yukiko and Chie’s consistent usage of the swimsuits he gifted, Yosuke clearly has a sharp enough understanding of Chie and Yukiko to memorize what their fashion tastes are. Understanding people is a good way to get people to trust you, as it leads to them feeling like their problems are heard by you. This is a less important knowledge of personal taste, but we can also see it in Yosuke's Social Link where he helps multiple Junes employees with complaints and problems they have and gives them advice. His understanding of people is what allows him to be so trusted, as it leads to people feeling like they're heard by him.
These sources conclude that supervisors and managers with a high level of emotional intelligence are seen by subordinates as better leaders. The results of the current study provide evidence for the relationship between emotional intelligence and servant leadership. Respondents who rated their manager as having a high level of emotional intelligence also rated their manager as exhibiting a high level of servant leadership. This contradicts the finding of Barbuto et al. (2014), who found no significant relationship between emotional intelligence of the leader and followers’ perception about their leader’s servant leadership behaviour. The relationship between emotional intelligence and trust in the immediate supervisor was also significant. This confirms the conceptual link between emotional intelligence and trust in the immediate supervisor. Leaders who are able to understand and manage their emotions and display self-control act as role models for followers; in so doing they enhance the followers’ trust and respect for the leader (Gardner & Stough, 2002). This relationship between emotional intelligence and trust in the immediate supervisor (t = 2.6; p < 0.05) was correspondingly found in a South African context (n = 178) by Schlechter and Strauss (2008).
If you do not know what servant leadership is, it is basically leadership that cares for and helps or "serves" its followers, such as is shown in Junes, where the employees all come to Yosuke if they have a problem. It's distinguished from charismatic leadership, but it does still require charisma as defined by Tskhay, as the followers believe the leader will be able to easily assist them with their problems and therefore have faith in both their leader's capability and believe in their kindness and therefore be more willing to help them when they ask for it.
(You can read more here, albeit it does not talk about charisma, you will notice that it mentions criteria for said leadership that are mentioned by Tskhay.)
All these prove what kind of a person Yosuke is, and they highlight how important Yosuke is to the Investigation Team. This is why he's very much the "heart" of the Investigation Team--he's a walking indicator of a situation's severity, such as the scene where he decides to find the Midnight Channel Killer and when he agrees with Naoto on killing Namatame show how dire the situation is. After all, Yosuke is the first member of the Investigation Team to actually decide he wants to stop the MCK due to them being responsible for the murder of his at the time best friend, Saki Konishi. He realizes the people around him are dying, and now there’s no way to ignore how dangerous this individual is. He successfully talks Yu into joining him on this endeavor and convincing him to use his resources to help find who the Midnight Channel Killer is.
He's also skilled at helping others and clearly understanding people well enough to empathize with their situation and figure out how to help them. He’s the person who knows how to cheer people up when they’re in a deeply emotional state, and is able to provide resources in his own right, as Yosuke is the Junes manager’s child and therefore is part of why the Investigation Team has a safe entry point into the TV World, allowing them to save the other kidnapping victims without risk of needing rescue themselves. He also is why Teddie has a home outside of the TV World. This capability leads to him being deeply trusted and beloved, so when he needs favors done (such as when he requests for the Investigation Team's help setting up the Junes concert) it happens.
This leads to him being considered charismatic and trustworthy thanks to these traits he has that are necessary for him to be considered as such. Yosuke is basically a second leader of the group, and the right-hand man of Yu, being able to support everyone in ways not even Yu can do thanks to his own charisma being different and from a different stem than Yu.
gummygunk
areudirty
dailybridgerton
jacobvanloon
stormborns
izzy806
pixelskylines
germansingergirl
