Power Posing

Stand up Straight

The simple act of adjusting your posture works as an instant shift of focus. You may not notice the difference in how you feel, but research indicates a shift in affect (raw emotion) after adjusting posture.

Initial studies were not how posture affects affect, though, but how the body reacts to emotional and feeling states. Darwin studied the physical expression of affect, practically everything from screaming infants causing the contraction of muscles around the eyes, to the bodily expressions of grief, suffering, joy, love, meditation, determination, shyness, shame, and devotion. He covered just about every way the body displays feelings and emotion. This was documented in his 1872 book, “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.” That publication began an era concerned with how affect affects the person.

It took another hundred years before researchers turned this paradigm around and began studying the affect posture has on feeling and behavior. In 1982, the first study on the affect of posture on motivation, emotion, and behavior appeared in the journal “Motivation and Emotion.” The study (actually four studies) examined the affects of stooped relative to upright physical posture on depressed mood and helplessness. It asked the question, is a slumped-over relative to an upright physical posture a nonverbal depreciating of oneself? 

They found no significant difference in self-reporting of self-confidence between the slumped and the upright posture groups. But that does not mean that posture does not affect feeling. It means the subjects were unaware of the affect that posing had on them. 

When each subject was given a series of puzzles to solve, some of which were actually unsolvable, there was much lower persistence in working on the insolvable puzzles in the stooped-posture group. And after this puzzle-solving session, subjects who were in the slumped-posture group rated themselves as having significantly stronger feelings of helplessness and external control. This group also reported being more stressed. Posing had a definite effect on affect or feeling. Posture is more than a passive refection of emotional states.

Posture Affects Neuroendocrine System

A study published in September 2010 in “Psychological Science” looked at power poses. Humans and other animals express power through open, expansive postures, and they express powerlessness through closed contractive postures. This study asked if these power postures cause a person to become more powerful. It asked if power postures cause neuroendocrine and behavioral changes in male and female participants.

Other studies have shown the neuroendocrine profiles of the powerful differentiate them from the powerless. In humans and other animals, testosterone levels reflects and reinforces dispositional and situational status and dominance. The powerful and dominant have more of this hormone than the powerless. Testosterone rises in anticipation of a competition and as a result of a win, but drops following a defeat.

The other hormone that separates the dominant from the meek is cortisol, the stress hormone. Power holders show lower basal cortisol levels and lower cortisol reactivity to stressors than powerless people, and cortisol drops as power is achieved. The chronically elevated cortisol levels of low-power individuals are associated with impaired immune functioning, hypertension, and memory loss. When you have chronically high cortisol levels, you are chronically stressed out.

Power Posing

So wouldn’t it be great if you could increase testosterone levels, become more dominant, and decrease cortisol levels and become less stressed simply by adjusting your posture? By power posing? The results of a study with 26 females and 16 males shows you can. Subjects were randomly assigned to the high-power pose or low-power pose group. A high-power pose is an expansive, open posture in contrast with a constrictive, closed, minimum space, collapsing inward, low-posture pose. 

public domain images Power Posing

Raise Dominance Hormone Testosterone and Lower Stress Hormone Cortisol

The goal of the research was to test whether high-power poses produce power in terms of not only feeling powerful, but with elevation of the dominance hormone testosterone and the lowering of  the stress hormone cortisol. Participants randomly assigned to the high or low-power pose held two poses in their assigned category for one minute each.

The experimenter placed an ECG lead on the back of each calf and the underside of the left arm. Saliva samples were taken before and approximately seventeen minutes after the power posing. The subjects had no idea of what the poses signified. They were told the study was about the most affective position or recording electrodes placed on their bodies to record ECGS. They had no idea the study was about power posing.

High-power poses caused a significant increase in testosterone. Low-power poses caused a significant increase in cortisol. The authors conclude that by simply changing physical posture, an individual prepares mentally and physiologically to endure difficult and stressful situations and perhaps to actually improve confidence and performance in situations such as interviewing for jobs, speaking in public, disagreeing with a boss, or taking potentially profitable risks.

Attention Therapies

Power Posing is part of my Attention Therapies. Attention Therapies target affect or emotions. They include Attention Training, Open Focus, Metacognitive Therapy, Insight Meditation, and Ki Breathing Therapy. They can supplement or supplant Cognitive Behavior Therapy, but I would include Attention Therapies as a part of any Therapy.

Self-help books that help:

Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus

The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body