Taking a "power pose" before an important meeting or interview won't boost your confidence or make you feel stronger, says an Iowa State University researcher. The concept of "power posing" — think of a Wonder Woman pose — became popular after a 2010 study reported that people who took extended physical poses lowered cortisol levels (an indicator of stress), increased testosterone levels, and were more powerful and willing. felt to take more risks. However, Marcus Credé, an associate professor of psychology at the state of Iowa, says there are no studies to support claims that power posing works.
Not long after the original study was published, it was criticized for failing to replicate the results. In 2018, the researchers responded to critics by presenting an updated analysis of their own research and other studies of power posing to support their claims. In a new commentary, Credé reviewed each study on power posing and the analysis the researchers provided and found one significant flaw.
Nearly all of the studies he reviewed were poorly designed and failed to compare power poses to normal poses. Instead, they only compared power poses to contractive poses, such as slouching. Credé says a neutral comparison stance can skew the results. That's because any difference between a power pose and a contractive pose can occur because a contractive pose makes you feel worse, rather than an extended pose that makes you feel better.
The lack of oversight is troubling, Credé said, knowing that dozens of researchers have been working on this problem and never identified the problem. What worries him even more is the number of people who have adopted the concept. A TED Talk on power posing has been viewed more than 70 million times and a book on power posing was a New York Times bestseller.
“There has literally never been a study that compared a power pose to a normal pose and found any positive effect for a power pose,” Credé said. “I find this quite stunning because of the multimillion dollar industry built around power posing. It's not like a drug being sold to the public without a single study ever showing that the drug works better than placebo or does nothing.”
Feelings of strength decreased compared to neutral attitude Only four of the nearly 40 studies that exist on power posing have been designed to highlight its benefits, Credé said. One such study compared the effect of slouching, neutral and power poses on feelings of dominance. According to the findings, dominant feelings were highest in the neutral position and the power pose was associated with reduced feelings of power.
Similarly, three other studies examined the three poses to determine the effect on mood. All reported significant differences in mood for different poses, but Credé says the results are driven by the negative effect of the slouching posture.
“The only conclusion researchers should draw from the existing literature on posture feedback is that contractual attitudes such as slouching should be avoided, which is hardly new,” he said. “I remember my primary school teachers yelling at us about lanky and not what's sold here.”
