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Your Body Language may Shape who You are by Amy Cuddy

1. The Two Audiences of Body Language​

Nonverbal behaviour (body language) is commonly understood as a form of communication that influences how others judge us, but Cuddy focuses on the often-forgotten audience: ourselves.

  • External Influence: Non-verbals influence how others judge us, which can predict meaningful life outcomes like who we hire, who we date, and even whether a physician is sued.
  • Internal Influence: Our own non-verbals influence our own thoughts, feelings, and even our body's physiology.

2. High Power vs. Low Power Poses​

Cuddy's research focuses on the nonverbal expressions of power and dominance:

  • High Power Poses ("Expansion"): These are poses that involve expanding and taking up space—stretching out, opening up, and making oneself big. This is consistent across the animal kingdom. The "Pride" expression (arms up in a V, chin slightly lifted) is a universal, innate display of winning.
  • Low Power Poses ("Contraction"): These are poses that involve closing up, wrapping oneself up, and making oneself small.

When two people interact with unequal power, the low-power person tends to complement (do the opposite of) the high-power person's non-verbals—they make themselves smaller.

3. The Mind-Body Connection (The Hypotheses)​

Cuddy asks: Do our non-verbals govern how we think and feel about ourselves? Just as being forced to smile makes us feel happy, can pretending to be powerful make us feel powerful?

  • The Mind of the Powerful: Powerful people are generally more assertive, confident, optimistic, take more risks, and think more abstractly.
  • The Hormonal Difference:
    • Testosterone (Dominance Hormone): High-power alpha males and effective leaders have high testosterone.
    • Cortisol (Stress Hormone): High-power, effective leaders have low cortisol, meaning they are powerful, assertive, and laid-back, not stress-reactive.
  • In primate hierarchies, an individual who takes over an alpha role sees their testosterone rise significantly and their cortisol drop significantly within a few days.

4. The Power Posing Experiment​

Cuddy and her collaborator, Dana Carney, tested whether a minimal intervention of two minutes could change a person's hormones and behaviour:

  • Setup: Participants adopted either high-power poses (e.g., "Wonder Woman," hands on hips) or low-power poses (e.g., folding up, touching neck) for two minutes.
  • Results on Behaviour (Risk Tolerance): High-power posers were significantly more likely to gamble (86% vs. 60% for low-power posers).
  • Results on Hormones (After 2 Minutes):
    • Testosterone: High-power posers experienced a 20% increase, while low-power posers experienced a 10% decrease.
    • Cortisol: High-power posers experienced a 25% decrease, while low-power posers experienced a 15% increase. Conclusion: Two minutes of power posing leads to hormonal changes that configure the brain to be either assertive, confident, and comfortable (high T, low C) or stress-reactive and shut down (low T, high C).

5. Application: The Job Interview​

Cuddy wanted to test if power posing could change life outcomes in evaluative situations, like a job interview.

  • The Test: Participants held high or low-power poses for two minutes before a stressful, five-minute job interview where the judges gave no nonverbal feedback .
  • The Result: Independent coders, blind to the posing condition, preferred to hire the high-power posers and rated them more positively overall.
  • The Driver: The effect was not driven by the content or competence of the speech, but by the "presence" they brought to the speech—they were "breaking their true selves".

6. The Final Message: Fake It Till You Become It​

Cuddy addresses the feeling that "power posing" feels fake or like being a fraud (the "imposter syndrome") by sharing her personal story of overcoming a traumatic brain injury and being told she would not finish college.

  • Her Advisor's Advice: Her advisor, Susan Fiske, told her, "You're going to stay and this is what you're going to do: you're going to fake it... until you have this moment where you say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm doing it'".
  • The Reframing: Cuddy realized she had not just faked it till she made it, but she had faked it till she became it.
  • The Call to Action: "Don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it." .

She encourages the audience to use this hack by finding two minutes before any stressful evaluative situation to power pose (in an elevator, a bathroom stall, or behind closed doors) to configure the brain to cope the best.