How Your Body Language Can Change Your Life

When was the last time you paid close attention to your body language? Maybe when you caught a glimpse of your reflection in a mirror as you walked down the street and made a conscious effort to push your shoulders back. Or when you were in a job interview and made a deliberate effort to maintain eye contact with your interviewer. But the truth is we often don’t take very much notice of what our body is communicating to the outside world on a day-to-day basis … and what it is communicating to ourselves.  

A large percentage of our communication is nonverbal, potentially even more than is verbal.  We all know how powerful first impressions can be, often times we can get a pretty good idea of what somebody is like before they even begin to speak. We can also usually tell whether a person is confident or perhaps more self-conscious by the way they hold themselves.

It is fairly easy to spot a ‘powerful’ person. These people tend to be more assertive, optimistic, confident and risk taking. They hold their heads up high and make themselves known in the room in which they occupy with their self-assured presence. But what may not be so easy to spot are the hormonal differences that powerful people possess.

Generally, powerful people tend to have higher levels of testosterone (‘dominance’ hormone) and lower level of cortisol (stress hormone). This can be beneficial as leaders are often placed in high-pressure situations in which they are required to perform at an optimal level. So we all know that our hormones can affect our behaviour … but can our behaviour affect our hormones?

 Amy Cuddy and her team of researchers aimed to find out exactly this using what are referred to as ‘high power’ and ‘low power’ poses. High power poses refer to stances that exhibit confidence in which one may spread out, open up and take up more space. Low power poses generally exhibit feelings of shame and low confidence, these are generally closed postures in which one tries to minimise the amount of space they occupy by collapsing the body inward. 

In this study, participants were assigned to either a high power or low power group and each participant held two poses (either high power or low power) for one minute each. Participant’s risk taking was measured using a gambling task; feelings of power were assessed with questionnaires and testosterone and cortisol levels were measured using saliva samples. These were assessed both before and after the power poses.

In the high power group there was approximately a 20% increase in testosterone compared to a 10% decrease in the low power group. There was a 25% decrease in cortisol levels in the high power group and a 15% increase in the low power group. Finally in the high power group the likelihood of gambling was 86% compared to just 60% in the low power group. It appeared that these simple changes in our bodies actually result in measurable physiological changes.

 In Cuddy’s next study, she and her team of researchers aimed to find out whether power posing could change ones life in a meaningful and practical way. In this experiment, the participants practiced either high power poses or low power poses and were then required to take part in a high-pressure mock job interview (the ‘interviewers’ were unaware of which participants practiced high power poses or low power poses). These speeches were filmed and examined in regards to speech quality and presentation quality.

It was found that high power posers performed better and were more likely to be chosen to be ‘hired’. However what was interesting was that speech quality, including the actual content and structure of the participants interview speech, was not the most predictive factor. Instead it was the presentation quality that appeared to have an impact. This refers to the overall presence the participant brought to the interview such as confidence, passion and enthusiasm. They weren’t necessarily more knowledgeable than those in the low power group; they simply brought a more confident and self-assured presence to the interview and didn’t let their self doubts get in the way.

While future research is needed in this area, the results do look promising thus far. So next time you are walking around, closed in and slouched over, stressing over all of the things you have to do today and wondering what everyone else is thinking of you; it may be helpful to take a few minutes aside and make a conscious effort to push your shoulders back and open up. As the saying goes, fake it till you make it!