If you stand like Wonder Woman or Superman, will you feel stronger? Will you actually be stronger?
Psychology researchers have investigated these questions for decades. After all, mind and body are intertwined. How you stand or sit can give you feedback on how you feel, and your feelings are often revealed by the way you hold yourself.
One influential study published in 2010 suggested that power poses – body positions like a wide stance with your hands on your hips while standing, or clasping your hands behind your head and putting your feet on a desk while sitting – increased levels of the male sex hormone testosterone and decreased levels of cortisol, the main stress hormone. High levels of testosterone and low levels of cortisol are linked to fearlessness, risk-taking and insensitivity to punishment. From there, scientists assumed that power posing could affect how people felt, how they acted and how others perceived them.
These findings drew enormous attention outside of the lab. Power posing was advertised as a way of improving one’s life, and the idea took off in popular culture. Intentionally adopting the stance of a powerful person could apparently give you the confidence and the appearance of a powerful person.
But in the following years, some researchers could not replicate the original findings when they tried to rerun the experiments. The lead author of the original study admitted to mistakes and distanced herself from it. Since then, there’s been a heated debate about whether engaging in power poses really does anything at all.
In an effort to figure out which power pose findings hold up and which do not, we conducted a meta-analytic review – that is, we combined data from all available research on the topic. Based on dozens of studies, we suggest that there is something to the idea of power poses, even if the research was overhyped in the past.
Pulling together findings from 88 studies
We focused on two types of body positions.
A low-power pose may look similar to a child receiving a reprimand.
JGI/Jamie Grill/Tetra images via Getty Images
The first type included power poses. Examples of high-power poses would be standing or sitting in a very expansive way, taking up a lot of space. A low-power pose would be crossing your legs and folding your arms while standing, or bowing your head and putting your hands on your lap while seated.
The second type included upright postures, like standing erect or sitting up straight in a chair versus bowing your head and slumping. Theoretical and empirical research have suggested that power poses are nonverbal expressions of dominance, whereas upright postures are displays of prestige.
Following open-science standards, we preregistered our protocol with the Open Science Framework before conducting the analysis. This step is meant to increase transparency. By stating the game plan upfront, you can’t fiddle around with the data to…
