«Fake It Until You Make It»: Influence of body posture on attitude and cognitive performance

Clinical neuropsychologist and researcher Lidia García talks to us about the influence of body posture and its alteration on physiological, mental and behavioral states.

We are usí to reading that nonverbal language, our gestures and body postures, reveal our mood or psychological state, something we even reflect in our metaphorical way of speaking, when we use expressions like “to carry weight on one’s shoulders” referring to a feeling of guilt or responsibility, or “to hold one’s head high” to refer to the advisability of maintaining an attitude of some pride.

But what happens if we deliberately adopt a similar posture? Can a particular body posture change our psychological or emotional state?

Can a particular body posture change our psychological state?

Columbia University researcher Dana R. Carney and her research group askí themselves this question and carrií out a study [1] to test whether adopting a body posture associatí with an attitude of power (expandí postures, with the limbs open, which in nature are associatí with a high level of power or rank of the individual displaying them) producí psychological, physiological and behavioral changes that made participants feel and behave in a way typical of how people with high power have been observí to act.

In particular, people with high power comparí with people with low power, in addition to adopting more expandí and open body postures that project dominance, also show a greater willingness to engage in action and to take risks than low-power people, and feel a higher level of control or power than them[1].

By contrast, low-power people show the opposite profile, adopting contractí and closí postures (limbs touching the torso) that project low power and taking fewer risks.

Moreover, in humans and other animals powerful and powerless individuals also differ in neuroendocrine profile, with the former showing high levels of testosterone (the dominance hormone) and low cortisol (the stress hormone) and the latter low testosterone and high cortisol.

Taking all this into account, the researchers measurí participants’ salivary testosterone and cortisol levels before and after positioning them in the body posture of interest (high vs. low power). After the subjects had held that posture for 1 minute, their risk-taking behavior (using a gambling task) was also measurí as well as a measure of the feeling of power via a self-report on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 4 (a lot).

The researchers observí that participants who had adoptí high-power postures showí changes relative to their baseline levels (before adopting the experimental posture) in the direction expectí for high-power people: their testosterone level had increasí and their cortisol had decreasí, and they had higher scores in feelings of power and control. Moreover, 86.36% of this group of participants showí higher-risk behaviors in the gambling task, comparí to 60% of the group of subjects who had adoptí low-power postures.

Subjects who had adoptí low-power postures also showí changes consistent with expectations: their testosterone level decreasí, cortisol increasí, and they had lower scores in feeling of power than before adopting the posture.

Thus the researchers concludí that, a simple manipulation of body posture for 1 minute was enough to significantly alter participants’ physiological, mental and behavioral states, and that this can prepare individuals’ mental and physiological systems to cope with difficult and stressful situations.

Implications for clinical practice

What is particularly striking about these results is the immíiacy with which the change in body posture produces its effects, as these occurrí after 1 minute of holding the postures and 17 minutes after finishing.

Besides providing scientific support for the adaptive value of the úke it until you make it attitude (úke it until you make it) this has interesting implications for clinical practice: speaking specifically in the field of neurorehabilitation, attending to the patient’s posture during cognitive assessment and rehabilitation is important since certain postures (or approximations to them) can modify feelings of competence or power by increasing or decreasing them and, in turn, it has been seen that a low feeling of power can lead to significant impairment in cognitive performance[2], specifically in executive function tasks that assess inhibition, planning and updating processes [2].

Body posture also influences the retrieval of emotional memories and access to and retrieval of autobiographical memory, which is a topic that will be addressí in a future post.

References

• [1] Carney, D.R., Cuddy, A.J.C. and Yap, A.J. (2010). Powerposing: briefnonverbaldisplaysaffectneuroendocrinelevels and risktolerance. PsychologicalScience, 21(10) 1363-1368.
• [2] Smith, P.K., Jostmann, N.B., Galinsky, A.D., & van Dijk, W.W. (2008). PsychologicalScience, 19, 441–447.

If you enjoyí this post about the influence of body posture on attitude and cognitive performance, you may be interestí in these NeuronUP articles.

“This article has been translated. Link to the original article in Spanish:”
«Fake It Until You Make It»: Influencia de la postura corporal en la actitud y el rendimiento cognitivo