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'Power poses' study refutes past claims; no significant effect on hormones
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So-called “power poses” likely have no significant effect on hormone levels or the willingness to make risky decisions, contradicting an earlier study that claimed the poses may influence both, according to research in Psychological Science.
Various physical postures that express power and dominance — hands pressed to the hips or leaning back with arms crossed behind the head — do result in a significant effect on self-reported feelings of power, according to researchers.
“This indicates that the main influence of power poses is the fact that subjects realize that they feel more self-confident,” Eva Ranehill, PhD, of the department of economics at University of Zurich, Switzerland, said in a press release. “We find no proof, however, that this has any effect on their behavior or their physiology.”
Ranehill and colleagues at other institutions analyzed data from 102 men and 98 women, most of them students from Zurich, who were randomly assigned to take on bodily poses with “high power” or “low power.” After the exercise, participants completed a task involving their willingness to take on financial risk in which they could choose between receiving a fixed monetary sum or participating in a risky lottery game. The risky option was a lottery with a 50% chance of either winning 10 or zero francs, while the fixed option varied from 2 to 7 francs. Researchers collected two saliva samples — one before participants assumed the positions and one after completing the behavioral tasks — to assess hormone levels. After the tasks, participants filled out a questionnaire rating their feelings of power on a 4-point scale, “not at all powerful” (1) to “very powerful” (4).
Using two-tailed t tests, researchers replicated findings from a similar 2010 study that participants in the high-power pose condition reported, on average, higher feelings of power than participants in the low-power condition (mean difference, 0.245; 95% CI, 0.044-0.446).
In contrast to the 2010 study, two-tailed t tests indicated no significant impact of physical position on either risk-taking (mean difference, –0.033; 95% CI, –0.085 to 0.019) or changes in testosterone (mean difference, –4.077; 95% CI, –9.801 to 1.647), as well as no effect for cortisol (mean difference, –0.028; 95% CI, –0.078 to 0.022).
Participants in the new study followed pose instructions on a computer and held each position for 3 minutes vs. being manually configured and holding poses for 1 minute in the original study.
Researchers also informed participants in their consent forms that the more recent study investigated whether physical position influences hormone levels and behavior, although the instructions gave no hints about specific effects. Although these differences may have influenced results, the larger sample size (200 participants vs. 42 in the 2010 study) still gives strength to the findings, according to researchers.
“Our study is much more meaningful than the original study, as we have much more data,” Roberto Weber, PhD, of the University of Zurich, said in a press release. “The greater number of subjects in our study makes it much less probable that our results are due to coincidence. Our study is to the best of our knowledge the only published paper that again examines the effect of power poses on hormones.” – by Regina Schaffer
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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