Power Posing
Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are
What did Dr. Cuddy Research?
What's the Big Idea?
All research in Psychology begins with a ‘Big Idea’. Dr. Cuddy’s big idea was presented with the question, Can you fake it until you make it? She wanted to know if you could truly do something, such as pretending to be powerful, to the point of believing that’s who you are or are becoming.
This is when the idea of the Power Pose came into play.
Dr. Cuddy brought students into a room and had them practice power poses of both low and high power. The students held the power pose for two minutes and were then asked about their feeling of power, including being given the option to gamble and test just how risky they would be willing to act. After doing this test they also tracked the Cortisol and Testosterone hormone levels from before and after to see how they vary between the high and low powered men and women.