Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that charismatic leadership, characterized by nonverbal expressiveness and immediacy, would lead via emotional contagion to the imitation of the leader's nonverbal behavior. In Study I, charismatic leaders were college students whose performance of a simulated campaign speech included more smiles, more intense smiles, and longer and more frequent visual attention to the audience. Observers showed higher levels of all 4 relevant behaviors while watching charismatic leaders. In Study 2, college student participants watched more and less charismatic excerpts selected from President Clinton's and ex-President Bush's responses during their first 1992 televised debate. Comparing the same behaviors, there was a similar pattern to Study 1 for responses to the Clinton excerpts, and an almost reversed pattern for the Bush excerpts. The overall results support an emotional contagion effect of charismatic leadership when the leader exhibits truly charismatic behavior.The subject of leadership has long been of great interest to social scientists as well as to practitioners of management and politics. Since scientific research on the subject began in earnest about a half century ago, a succession of theoretical approaches has been explored. These have focused, more or less in chronological order, on the special traits of the leader (as reviewed by Stogdill, 1948), the press of situational demands (Whyte, 1943), the possible interaction of leader traits and situational affordances (Fiedler, 1967), and, most recently, on the transaction or exchange between leader and followers (Hollander, 1992). Throughout, two outcomes have been assessed, leader emergence or how leaders are chosen, and leader effectiveness or how well leaders function. And two types of leadership have been studied, one at the micro level where leader and followers interact directly, and one at the macro level where the leader is known to followers indirectly through reputation, the mass media, or both. 'The authors wish to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor of this journal for their constructive criticism and their patience. They also owe thanks to student colleagues who assisted with data collection, tabulation, and analysis throughout this project.
