Power posing

Power posing is a controversial self-improvement technique or "life hack" in which people stand in a posture that they mentally associate with being powerful, in the hope of feeling and behaving more assertively. Though the underlying science is strongly disputed, its promoters continue to argue that people can foster positive life changes simply by assuming a "powerful" or "expansive" posture for a few minutes before an interaction in which confidence is needed. One popular image of the technique in practice is that of candidates "lock[ing] themselves in bathroom stalls before job interviews to make victory V's with their arms."[1]

Amy Cuddy demonstrating her theory of "power posing" with a photo of the comic-book superhero Wonder Woman

Power posing was first suggested in a 2010 paper by Dana R. Carney, Amy Cuddy, and Andy Yap in the journal Psychological Science,[2] and came to prominence through a popular TED talk by Cuddy in 2012.[3] However, in 2015 several researchers began reporting that the effect could not be replicated,[4][5][6] and, in 2016, Carney issued a statement abandoning the theory.[7] Cuddy, however, continued her research,[8][1] claiming to have evidence that posture feedback can at least make people feel more powerful.[9][10][11] Today, power posing is often cited as an example of the replication crisis in the sciences.[12]

Initial claims

The initial research on power posing was published in 2010. Dana Carney, Amy Cuddy, and Andy Yap claimed that high-power poses "produce power". The study included 42 participants, who were coached by researchers to assume a physical position of power. Hormone levels were measured before and after, and the authors stated that they found an increase in testosterone and a decrease in cortisol after posing.[1] The researchers themselves suggested a range of possible real-world applications:

These findings suggest that, in some situations requiring power, people have the ability to "fake it 'til they make it." Over time and in aggregate, these minimal postural changes and their outcomes potentially could improve a person's general health and well-being. This potential benefit is particularly important when considering people who are or who feel chronically powerless because of lack of resources, low hierarchical rank in an organization, or membership in a low-power social group."[2]

The researchers concluded that power posing induces lasting hormonal changes, which can lead to better outcomes in work-related situations, such as job interviews and wage negotiations.

Replication failure

Already before the publication of Carney, Cuddy and Yap's original results, doubts had been raised about the reliability of contemporary research methodologies. In 2005, for example, John Ioannidis published a paper with the provocative title, "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False".[13] The earliest criticism of Carney et al.'s work came from Steven Stanton, who noted their lack of attention to gender differences. "Carney et al. used a novel manipulation to ask an important question," he concluded, "but the degree to which their findings can be fully understood and implemented into future research is questionable without more complete analyses."[14]

A 2015 article, published in Psychological Science by Ranehill et al. reported the results of a conceptual replication of the study using a larger sample. The researchers confirmed Carney et al.'s results about felt power but could not detect any physiological or behavioral effects of power posing.[4] The statistical methods that may have led to the original erroneous findings were reviewed by Uri Simonsohn and Joseph Simmons of the Wharton School in a 2016 paper, concluding that the current body of research fails to "suggest the existence of an effect once we account for selective reporting".[5][15][16]

In the years that followed, attempts were made by various research groups to apply power posing manipulation in different contexts. The results did not support the assumptions made by Cuddy et al. In a 2016 study by Garrison et al. the effect of posture manipulation was combined with dominant vs. submissive gaze. Despite a large sample size, no effect was found on risk taking and, in contrast to original expectations, adopting an expansive pose reduced feelings of power.[17] Deuter et al. (2016) investigated the effect of cognitive role taking and Cuddy's power posing manipulation in the Trier Social Stress Test; although role taking had an influence on the cortisol and testosterone response after stress, the posture manipulation had no effect on hormonal, behavioral or subjective measures.[18]

Where influences on hormones were found, these were sometimes opposite to the predicted direction. In a study conducted by Smith et al. in 2017, participants had to compete in a challenging task while they had to assume high or low power poses. The authors report no main effect of pose type on testosterone, cortisol, risk or feelings of power. However, they found an interaction between pose type and competition outcome on testosterone: while winners assigned to a high-power pose had small rise in testosterone levels. Yet, losers had a reduction in testosterone after holding high-power poses.[19]

In 2016, Dana Carney, who had been the lead author on the original 2010 paper and had supported the publication of the 2015 Ranehill et al. replication attempt, published a statement on the University of California, Berkeley website, stating that she no longer believed the effect was valid: "I do not believe that 'power pose effects' are real...the evidence against the existence of power poses is undeniable."[1][7][20][8]

Joseph Cesario, an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University, who co-edits Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology, arranged a special issue on power posing that published in June 2017; the issue included eleven new studies, along with a meta-analyses, which found that the effect of power posing on power behaviors was not replicated.[5][21][22][23][24] The published studies were designed to definitively answer whether the power-posing hypothesis was real and included high quality research features like pre-registration of endpoints.[25] Carney co-authored the introduction to the issue, and noted that while the meta-analysis failed to find any effect in power behaviors, it did find a small effect in a feeling of power; she also wrote that the studies could not resolve whether the effect on a feeling of power was only an experimental artifact.[25] In a 2019 review of all prior power posing research Marcus Crede, an Associate Professor of Psychology at Iowa State University noted that no study had ever found that power poses resulted in higher feelings of power than a normal pose. Crede noted that almost all prior research had only compared power poses to contractive poses like slouching but had failed to include a normal pose as a control group. The few studies that had compared a power pose to a normal pose found no effect of power poses.[26]

Public attention

Since its promotion in a 2010 Harvard Business School Working Knowledge post,[27] Amy Cuddy has been the most visible proponent of power posing in the public sphere. Her interest in "studying how people can become their aspirational selves" stems from her own experience of recovering from head trauma after a car accident.[1] The power posing "hack" gained wide attention after a TED talk she gave in 2012, where she demonstrated the posture and argued for its benefits.[3] The technique was then covered by CNN and Oprah Winfrey; it was the centerpiece of her 2015 book Presence: Bringing your boldest self to your biggest challenges; and by 2017 her TED talk had been viewed by about 47 million viewers, becoming the second most popular.[1]

In 2015 it was widely noted in the UK media that some UK politicians (especially members of the UK Conservative Party) had begun to adopt an unnaturally wide stance at high-profile political events. It has been suggested by some academics and journalists that this may have been following Cuddy's 'power posing' advice, or a misunderstanding of it.[28] There was further comment on Tory power posing, mentioning comparisons to the Blackadder episode "Sense and Senility" where prince George takes talking lessons, and is encouraged to take up a "heroic" stance.[29][30]

By 2016, however, public discussion of power posing had shifted to the difficulty of replicating the effect in subsequent studies. An extensive series of articles on power posing replication was published by New York magazine by Jesse Singal and other contributors in its Science of Us section.[8][20][31][32] There was intense controversy around these issues and Cuddy reported experiencing harassment, including death threats, after the findings were not replicated.[33] In the spring of 2017, Cuddy left Harvard but continues to promote power posing as life-improvement technique.[1][10]

See also

References
  1. Dominus, Susan (October 18, 2017). "When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy". New York Times Magazine.
  2. Carney, Dana R.; Cuddy, Amy J.C.; Yap, Andy J. (January 10, 2010). "Power Posing: Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance" (PDF). Psychological Science. 21 (10): 1363–1368. doi:10.1177/0956797610383437. PMID 20855902.
  3. Cuddy, Amy (June 2012). "Your body language may shape who you are". TED. Retrieved 6 July 2019.
  4. Ranehill, Eva; Dreber, Anna; Johannesson, Magnus; Leiberg, Susanne; Sul, Sunhae; Weber, Roberto A. (May 26, 2015). "Assessing the Robustness of Power Posing: No Effect on Hormones and Risk Tolerance in a Large Sample of Men and Women" (PDF). Psychological Science. 26 (5): 653–6. doi:10.1177/0956797614553946. PMID 25810452.
  5. Simmons, Joseph P. (June 10, 2016). "Power Posing: P-Curving the Evidence". Data Colada. Psychological Science (forthcoming). SSRN 2791272.
  6. King, Tracy (1 May 2018). "Sajid Javid and the strange science behind power poses". the Guardian. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  7. Carney, Dana R. (nd). "My position on "Power Poses"" (PDF). Retrieved October 19, 2017.
  8. Singal, Jesse; Dahl, Melissa. "Here Is Amy Cuddy's Response to Critiques of Her Power-Posing Research". New York magazine. Retrieved October 21, 2017.
  9. Cuddy, Amy J. C.; Schultz, S. Jack; Fosse, Nathan E. (2 March 2018). "P-Curving a More Comprehensive Body of Research on Postural Feedback Reveals Clear Evidential Value for Power-Posing Effects: Reply to Simmons and Simonsohn (2017)". Psychological Science. 29 (4): 656–666. doi:10.1177/0956797617746749. PMID 29498906.
  10. Elsesser, Kim. "Power Posing Is Back: Amy Cuddy Successfully Refutes Criticism". Forbes. Retrieved 2018-07-17.
  11. Young, Emma. "54-study analysis says power posing does affect people's emotions and is worth researching further". British Psychological Society Research Digest. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
  12. Aschwanden, Christine (March 24, 2016). "Failure is moving science forward". FiveThirtyEight.
  13. Ioannidis, John P. A. (August 30, 2005). "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False". PLoS Medicine. 2 (8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124. PMC 1182327. PMID 16060722.
  14. Stanton, Steven J. (2011). "The Essential Implications of Gender in Human Behavioral Endocrinology Studies". Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. 5: 9. doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2011.00009. PMC 3057631. PMID 21441984.
  15. Gelman, Andrew. "Another failed replication of power pose". Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science. Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  16. Gelman, Andrew. "Beyond "power pose": Using replication failures and a better understanding of data collection and analysis to do better science". Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science. Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  17. Garrison, Katie E.; Tang, David; Schmeichel, Brandon J. (2016). "Embodying Power". Social Psychological and Personality Science. 7 (7): 623–630. doi:10.1177/1948550616652209.
  18. Deuter, Christian Eric; Schächinger, Hartmut; Best, Daniel; Neumann, Roland (September 2016). "Effects of two dominance manipulations on the stress response: Cognitive and embodied influences". Biological Psychology. 119: 184–189. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2016.06.004. PMID 27381928.
  19. Smith, Kristopher; Apicella, Coren (2017). "Winners, losers, and posers: The effect of power poses on testosterone and risk-taking following competition". Hormones and Behavior. 92: 172–181. doi:10.1016/j.yhbeh.2016.11.003. PMID 27840104.
  20. Singal, Jesse. "'Power Posing' Co-author: 'I Do Not Believe That 'Power Pose' Effects Are Real'". New York magazine. Retrieved October 21, 2017.
  21. Morris, David Z. (October 2, 2016). "'Power Poses' Researcher Dana Carney Now Says Effects are "Undeniably" False". Fortune.
  22. Kluger, Jeffrey (September 26, 2017). "'Power Poses' Don't Actually Work. Try These Confidence-Boosting Strategies Instead". Time. Retrieved October 19, 2017.
  23. Cesario, Joseph; Henion, Andy (September 10, 2017). "Eleven New Studies Suggest 'Power Poses' Don't Work". Michigan State University. Retrieved October 19, 2017.
  24. Bartels, Meghan (September 13, 2017). "'Power poses' don't really make you more powerful, nine more studies confirm". Newsweek. Retrieved October 19, 2017.
  25. Cesario, Joseph; Jonas, Kai J.; Carney, Dana R. (June 28, 2017). "CRSP special issue on power poses: what was the point and what did we learn?". Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology. 2 (1): 1–5. doi:10.1080/23743603.2017.1309876.
  26. Crede, Marcus (2019). "A Negative Effect of a Contractive Pose is not Evidence for the Positive Effect of an Expansive Pose: Comment on Cuddy, Schultz, and Fosse (2018)". Meta Psychology. 3. doi:10.15626/MP.2019.1723.
  27. Hanna, Julia. "Power Posing: Fake It Until You Make It". Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.
  28. Sharma, Ruchira (2018-04-30). "A body language expert on why Sajid Javid (and other Conservatives) use the bizarre 'power pose'". iNews. Retrieved 2018-04-30.
  29. Belam, Martin (2018-04-30). "Sajid Javid and the return of the Tory power stance". The Guardian. Retrieved 2019-07-06.
  30. Tucker, Grant (2018-05-05). "Tory power stance ridiculed by speaking coach as pose of a right plonker". The Times. Retrieved 2019-07-06.
  31. Singal, Jesse. "There's an Interesting House-of-Cards Element to the Fall of Power Poses". New York magazine. Retrieved October 21, 2017.
  32. Romm, Cari; Baer, Drake; Singal, Jesse; Dahl, Melissa. "Why People Love(d) Power Posing: A Science of Us Conversation". New York magazine. Retrieved October 21, 2017.
  33. Singal, Jesse. "How Should We Talk About Amy Cuddy, Death Threats, and the Replication Crisis?". New York magazine. Retrieved October 21, 2017.
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