Charismatic Leadership in Crisis Situations Journal Article

Overview

Charismatic leaders are often thought to emerge in times of crisis. This study examined the effects of evaluation stress and situational crisis on task performance and ratings of charismatic behavior, as assessed by outside coders on Conger and Kanungo’s C-K Scale. Fiftyfive three-member groups were randomly assigned a leader and asked to complete a projectplanning task. Half of the groups were randomly assigned to a stress condition, and all groups underwent a midsession crisis intervention. Results showed that leaders in the stress condition were perceived as significantly more charismatic than leaders in the no-stress condition, although ratings converged after the crisis manipulation.