Psychologists have developed the first scientific test of everyday charisma

By Christian Jarrett “Figures such as Princess Diana, Oprah Winfrey, Mahatma Gandhi, Ronald Reagan, and Adolf Hitler share this triumphant, mysterious, and fascinating descriptor”, write the authors of a new paper on charisma. And yet, they add, “the empirical study of charisma is relatively young and sparse, and no unifying conceptualization of charisma currently exists”. The research and theorizing that has been done has focused on charismatic leadership, they explain, neglecting the everyday variety. In their paper in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology the University of Toronto researchers describe how they developed their new six-item measure “The General Charisma Inventory” (GCI), and they show how scores on the GCI are associated with people’s persuasiveness and likability. The team, led by Konstantin Tskhay, began by asking just over a hundred American volunteers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk online survey website to come up with four characteristics of charismatic individuals. The researchers then whittled these suggestions down in various stages, which involved volunteers rating the suitability of the items and other volunteers rating themselves on the items. Removing any redundancy, the researchers ended up with a six-item self-report measure of charisma loading onto two main factors to do with having influence over others (including being able to guide them) and coming across as affable (being able to make ot...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Methods Personality Source Type: blogs