SCIENTISTS SAY THEY CAN MEASURE

YOUR CHARISMA WITH ONLY SIX QUESTIONS

A new paper suggests there’s a simple, scientifically accurate way to figure out how charismatic you are — whether you’re an exec or an entry-level employee. A team of researchers at the University of Toronto, led by Konstantin O. Tskhay (now a consultant at Deloitte), have taken aim at the idea that the average person can’t quantify charisma; and through a series of clever studies, they’ve made it surprisingly easy to do just that. According to their paper, published in the Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology and highlighted in The Wall Street Journal, your responses to six prompts can reveal just how charismatic you are. The prompts are below; rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 5 on each behaviour.

I am someone who … has a presence in a room has the ability to influence people knows how to lead a group makes people feel comfortable smiles at people often can get along with anyone

Now divide your total score by six to get your average charisma score. If it’s higher than 3.7, the researchers say you’re more charismatic than the average person. These prompts were developed through multiple studies the researchers conducted, with a total of nearly 1,000 participants.

The researchers asked participants to rate themselves on a series of qualities that described charismatic people and determined that charisma comes down to two factors: influence — i.e. leadership ability and strength of presence — and affability — or being pleasant and approachable. (In the prompts above, the first half corresponds to influence and the second half corresponds to affability). As with most personality assessments, you shouldn’t panic if you score lower on charisma than you’d like. There are plenty of ways to become more charismatic, from practicing reading other people’s emotions to using words people can relate to.