The Dark Side of Power Posing: Cape or Kryptonite? | MIND Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network
In
1942, the mild mannered Clark Kent excused himself from his friend Lois
Lane to take an important call. Clark slipped into a phone booth
(remember those?), and moments later Superman emerged. Have you ever
wished that you had ability to step into a phone booth or bathroom for a
minute to shed your insecurities in favor of superhuman confidence?
This would certainly be a handy trick before a job interview, public
speaking engagement, or even a first date. New research suggests that
power poses just might do the trick.
Throughout the animal kingdom expansive non-verbal expressions are
used to communicate dominance and power to others. If you can imagine a
silver back gorilla—or a corporate executive—pounding his (or her)
chest, you get the idea. A recent series of papers by Dana Carney, Amy
Cuddy and Andy Yap argue that these poses are not only an expression of
power, but may also induce feelings of power. This work is described in
an eloquent and emotionally gripping TED talk
by Dr. Cuddy. If you have not seen this talk already, you should. It
has been viewed by over 10 million people in less than a year (and liked
on Facebook by almost 300,000 more), which might make it the most
popular psychology presentation in history. The talk centers on a paper
in which Dr. Cuddy and her colleagues randomly assigned 42 participants
to complete high or low power poses for two minutes each. Before and
after the poses, participants in both conditions provided small samples
of their saliva, which were used to assess their testosterone and
cortisol levels. After power posing, participants were more likely to
take risks on a gambling task and reported feeling more powerful. More
strikingly, high power poses increased testosterone and decreased
cortisol—a neuroendocrine profile that has been previously linked
to leadership ability. Despite this seemingly trivial manipulation, the
effects of power posing were quite large by psychology standards. Or,
as Dr. Cuddy concluded in her TED Talk, these “tiny tweaks” led to “big
changes.” At a glance, it would seem that we are all a quick trip to the
phone booth away from strapping on a red cape and leaping over tall
buildings.
If you are feeling skeptical about drawing large conclusions from a small sample, a new paper
was published by Drs. Cuddy, Carney, Yap and their colleagues last week
suggesting that your concerns might be misplaced. Some of the new
studies used different analysis strategies than the original paper
(e.g., the results in the first paper adjusted for gender and other
covariates), but they did find that the effects of power posing were
replicable, if troubling. People who assume high-power poses were more
likely to steal money, cheat on a test and commit traffic violations in a
driving simulation. In one study, they even took to the streets of New
York City and found that automobiles with more expansive driver’s seats
were more likely to be illegally parked. It would seem that power posing
might be as likely to turn you into a villain like Lex Luther as it is
to turn you into Superman.
If you are already lacking self-confidence, you might reason that the
ends justify the means. Acting like a heartless jerk for a few minutes
may be a small cost to pay for your dream job or a promotion, right?
Although it is tempting to conclude that power posing might be a way to
trick our nervous system into feeling powerful, research by Pablo
Briñol, Richard Petty and Ben Wagner has shown that that this strategy
might actually backfire among the people who need power the most. In a paper
published prior to the power pose work described above, they examined
the possibility that power posing might make people more confident in
their own thoughts—even if those thoughts were negative! As
predicted, Dr. Briñol and his colleagues found that power posing
increased self-confidence, but only among participants who
already had positive self-thoughts. In contrast, power posing had
exactly the opposite effect on people who had negative self-thoughts. In
fact, it actually decreased their self-confidence as potential
professionals. In other words, power posing backfired among half the
participants. This earlier research provides an important lesson for
power posers. Although students from elite universities, like Columbia
and Berkeley, who composed most of the samples from the first few
papers, may benefit from power posing, many people may actually be worse
off. For the Clark Kents of the world, such as the nervous job
applicant or first generation college students, power posing may be more
like Kryptonite than a red cape.
Other recent research confirms that power poses may not exert a direct effect on feelings of power. In two studies,
Joe Cesario and Melissa McDonald found that power poses only increased
power when they were made in a context that indicated dominance. Whereas
people who held a power pose while they imagined standing at an
executive desk overlooking a worksite engaged in powerful behavior,
those who held a power pose while they imagined being frisked by the
police actually engaged in less powerful behavior. Likewise,
when people held a low power pose and imagined being a senior in high
school watching the freshmen scramble to find their classes, they
engaged in powerful behavior. In other words, the situational meaning of
the pose seems to matter more than the pose itself. This is all to say
that you should think twice before heading to the nearest phone booth to
strike a power pose since Superman, Lex Luther or even Clark Kent might
emerge.
Briñol, P., Petty, R. E., Wagner, B. (2009). Body postures effects on self-evaluation: A self-validation approach. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 1053-1064.
Carney, D. R., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Yap, A. J. (2010). Power
posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk
tolerance. Psychological Science, 21, 1363–1368.
Cesario, J., & McDonald, M. M. (2013). Bodies in context: Power poses as a computation of action possibility. Social Cognition, 31, 260-274.
Yap, A. J., Wazlawek, A. S., Lucas, B. J., Cuddy, A. J. C., &
Carney, D. R. (2013). The ergonomics of dishonesty: The effect of
incidental posture on stealing, cheating, and traffic violations.” Psychological Science.
About the Author: Jay Van Bavel is an Assistant
Professor of Psychology at New York University. His research uses
behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging methods to study how
subtle changes to the environment can alter our group identities and
moral values and therefore our judgments and decisions. Dr. Van Bavel
has published over 30 academic papers in some of the top journals in
psychology and neuroscience (e.g., Psychological Science, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience) and won numerous research awards, including the Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions in Social Neuroscience.
Dr. Van Bavel completed his PhD in Psychology at the University of
Toronto and a postdoctoral fellowship at The Ohio State University.
Follow on Twitter @jayvanbavel.
