What would you say if I told you that, “Our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behavior?” Actually, this is a quote that Amy Cuddy gave during her Ted Talks lecture on “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are.” So, what does that quote mean? Well, I thought at first she was talking about limitations that some people may have due to an injury or birth defect, but she actually was speaking about the power of mind verses body language.
Amy became interested in the power dynamics of non-verbal communication, because she is a social psychologist, and taught at a competitive business school. She noticed in her classroom that MBA students really exhibited the full range of non-verbal power body language when they entered the room. They would come in, sit down, and spread out. MBA students would also ask more questions during class time, and usually had better grades. Other students would enter more quietly, sit down, looking more closed up or tiny in their chair and personal space. This raised the question for Amy, “Does non-verbal body language govern how we think and feel about ourselves?”
Amy then put an experiment together with a group of people to help answer this question. She brought people into the lab to either hold high power poses or a low-power poses. The group was told nothing about the poses or there meanings. High power poses are confident poses. Low power poses portray that you are closed off, or protecting yourself. They would hold these poses for two minutes each, and then spit into a vial. Then Amy would ask them “How powerful do you feel?” on a series of items, and then would give them an opportunity to gamble. The conclusion to the experiment was, 86 percent of the high power posers would take more risk and gamble. Only 60 percent of the low-power posing people would gamble. The high power posers also had a 20 percent increase in testosterone levels. The low-posers had a 10 percent decrease. So two minutes lead to these hormonal changes that configured the brain to basically be assertive, confident and comfortable, or really stress-reactive and felling sort of shut down. So, it seems that our nonverbal do govern how we think and feel about ourselves, so it’s not just others, but it’s also ourselves. Also, our bodies change our minds.
Amy became interested in the power dynamics of non-verbal communication, because she is a social psychologist, and taught at a competitive business school. She noticed in her classroom that MBA students really exhibited the full range of non-verbal power body language when they entered the room. They would come in, sit down, and spread out. MBA students would also ask more questions during class time, and usually had better grades. Other students would enter more quietly, sit down, looking more closed up or tiny in their chair and personal space. This raised the question for Amy, “Does non-verbal body language govern how we think and feel about ourselves?”
Amy then put an experiment together with a group of people to help answer this question. She brought people into the lab to either hold high power poses or a low-power poses. The group was told nothing about the poses or there meanings. High power poses are confident poses. Low power poses portray that you are closed off, or protecting yourself. They would hold these poses for two minutes each, and then spit into a vial. Then Amy would ask them “How powerful do you feel?” on a series of items, and then would give them an opportunity to gamble. The conclusion to the experiment was, 86 percent of the high power posers would take more risk and gamble. Only 60 percent of the low-power posing people would gamble. The high power posers also had a 20 percent increase in testosterone levels. The low-posers had a 10 percent decrease. So two minutes lead to these hormonal changes that configured the brain to basically be assertive, confident and comfortable, or really stress-reactive and felling sort of shut down. So, it seems that our nonverbal do govern how we think and feel about ourselves, so it’s not just others, but it’s also ourselves. Also, our bodies change our minds.