Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are — Amy Cuddy

00:00Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast

00:15So I want to start by offering you a free no-tech life hack,

00:21and all it requires of you is this:

00:24that you change your posture for two minutes.

00:28But before I give it away, I want to ask you to right now

00:31do a little audit of your body and what you're doing with your body.

00:35So how many of you are sort of making yourselves smaller?

00:37Maybe you're hunching, crossing your legs, maybe wrapping your ankles.

00:41Sometimes we hold onto our arms like this.

00:45Sometimes we spread out. (Laughter)

00:48I see you.

00:50So I want you to pay attention to what you're doing right now.

00:53We're going to come back to that in a few minutes,

00:56and I'm hoping that if you learn to tweak this a little bit,

00:59it could significantly change the way your life unfolds.

01:02So, we're really fascinated with body language,

01:07and we're particularly interested in other people's body language.

01:11You know, we're interested in, like, you know — (Laughter) —

01:15an awkward interaction, or a smile,

01:19or a contemptuous glance, or maybe a very awkward wink,

01:24or maybe even something like a handshake.

01:27Narrator: Here they are arriving at Number 10.

01:30This lucky policeman gets to shake hands with the President of the United States.

01:35Here comes the Prime Minister -- No. (Laughter) (Applause)

01:40(Laughter) (Applause)

01:42Amy Cuddy: So a handshake, or the lack of a handshake,

01:46can have us talking for weeks and weeks and weeks.

01:48Even the BBC and The New York Times.

01:51So obviously when we think about nonverbal behavior,

01:55or body language -- but we call it nonverbals as social scientists --

01:58it's language, so we think about communication.

02:01When we think about communication, we think about interactions.

02:04So what is your body language communicating to me?

02:06What's mine communicating to you?

02:08And there's a lot of reason to believe that this is a valid way to look at this.

02:14So social scientists have spent a lot of time

02:17looking at the effects of our body language,

02:19or other people's body language, on judgments.

02:21And we make sweeping judgments and inferences from body language.

02:24And those judgments can predict really meaningful life outcomes

02:28like who we hire or promote, who we ask out on a date.

02:32For example, Nalini Ambady, a researcher at Tufts University,

02:37shows that when people watch 30-second soundless clips

02:41of real physician-patient interactions,

02:44their judgments of the physician's niceness

02:47predict whether or not that physician will be sued.

02:50So it doesn't have to do so much

02:52with whether or not that physician was incompetent,

02:54but do we like that person and how they interacted?

02:57Even more dramatic, Alex Todorov at Princeton

03:00has shown us that judgments of political candidates' faces

03:03in just one second predict 70 percent

03:07of U.S. Senate and gubernatorial race outcomes,

03:11and even, let's go digital,

03:14emoticons used well in online negotiations

03:18can lead you to claim more value from that negotiation.

03:21If you use them poorly, bad idea. Right?

03:24So when we think of nonverbals, we think of how we judge others,

03:27how they judge us and what the outcomes are.

03:30We tend to forget, though, the other audience

03:32that's influenced by our nonverbals, and that's ourselves.

03:35We are also influenced by our nonverbals,

03:38our thoughts and our feelings and our physiology.

03:41So what nonverbals am I talking about?

03:44I'm a social psychologist. I study prejudice,

03:47and I teach at a competitive business school,

03:50so it was inevitable that I would become interested in power dynamics.

03:54I became especially interested in nonverbal expressions

03:58of power and dominance.

04:00And what are nonverbal expressions of power and dominance?

04:03Well, this is what they are.

04:05So in the animal kingdom, they are about expanding.

04:08So you make yourself big, you stretch out,

04:11you take up space, you're basically opening up.

04:14It's about opening up.

04:15And this is true across the animal kingdom.

04:18It's not just limited to primates.

04:21And humans do the same thing. (Laughter)

04:24So they do this both when they have power sort of chronically,

04:27and also when they're feeling powerful in the moment.

04:30And this one is especially interesting because it really shows us

04:33how universal and old these expressions of power are.

04:38This expression, which is known as pride,

04:40Jessica Tracy has studied.

04:42She shows that people who are born with sight

04:45and people who are congenitally blind do this

04:48when they win at a physical competition.

04:51So when they cross the finish line and they've won,

04:53it doesn't matter if they've never seen anyone do it.

04:56They do this.

04:57So the arms up in the V, the chin is slightly lifted.

04:59What do we do when we feel powerless?

05:01We do exactly the opposite.

05:03We close up. We wrap ourselves up.

05:06We make ourselves small.

05:07We don't want to bump into the person next to us.

05:09So again, both animals and humans do the same thing.

05:12And this is what happens when you put together high and low power.

05:16So what we tend to do when it comes to power

05:19is that we complement the other's nonverbals.

05:22So if someone is being really powerful with us,

05:24we tend to make ourselves smaller. We don't mirror them.

05:27We do the opposite of them.

05:29So I'm watching this behavior in the classroom,

05:32and what do I notice?

05:34I notice that MBA students really exhibit the full range of power nonverbals.

05:42So you have people who are like caricatures of alphas,

05:44really coming into the room, they get right into the middle of the room

05:48before class even starts, like they really want to occupy space.

05:51When they sit down, they're sort of spread out.

05:53They raise their hands like this.

05:55You have other people who are virtually collapsing

05:58when they come in. As soon they come in, you see it.

06:00You see it on their faces and their bodies,

06:03and they sit in their chair and they make themselves tiny,

06:05and they go like this when they raise their hand.

06:08I notice a couple of things about this.

06:10One, you're not going to be surprised.

06:11It seems to be related to gender.

06:13So women are much more likely to do this kind of thing than men.

06:19Women feel chronically less powerful than men,

06:22so this is not surprising.

06:23But the other thing I noticed

06:25is that it also seemed to be related to the extent

06:28to which the students were participating, and how well they were participating.

06:32And this is really important in the MBA classroom,

06:35because participation counts for half the grade.

06:37So business schools have been struggling with this gender grade gap.

06:42You get these equally qualified women and men coming in

06:45and then you get these differences in grades,

06:47and it seems to be partly attributable to participation.

06:50So I started to wonder, you know, okay,

06:53so you have these people coming in like this, and they're participating.

06:57Is it possible that we could get people to fake it

07:00and would it lead them to participate more?

07:02So my main collaborator Dana Carney, who's at Berkeley,

07:06and I really wanted to know, can you fake it till you make it?

07:10Like, can you do this just for a little while

07:12and actually experience a behavioral outcome

07:15that makes you seem more powerful?

07:17So we know that our nonverbals govern how other people

07:20think and feel about us. There's a lot of evidence.

07:23But our question really was,

07:24do our nonverbals govern how we think and feel about ourselves?

07:28There's some evidence that they do.

07:31So, for example, we smile when we feel happy,

07:35but also, when we're forced to smile

07:38by holding a pen in our teeth like this, it makes us feel happy.

07:42So it goes both ways.

07:44When it comes to power, it also goes both ways.

07:48So when you feel powerful,

07:50you're more likely to do this,

07:52but it's also possible that when you pretend to be powerful,

07:58you are more likely to actually feel powerful.

08:02So the second question really was, you know,

08:05so we know that our minds change our bodies,

08:07but is it also true that our bodies change our minds?

08:12And when I say minds, in the case of the powerful,

08:14what am I talking about?

08:16So I'm talking about thoughts and feelings

08:18and the sort of physiological things that make up our thoughts and feelings,

08:22and in my case, that's hormones. I look at hormones.

08:25So what do the minds of the powerful versus the powerless look like?

08:29So powerful people tend to be, not surprisingly,

08:33more assertive and more confident, more optimistic.

08:37They actually feel they're going to win even at games of chance.

08:41They also tend to be able to think more abstractly.

08:45So there are a lot of differences. They take more risks.

08:47There are a lot of differences between powerful and powerless people.

08:51Physiologically, there also are differences

08:53on two key hormones: testosterone, which is the dominance hormone,

08:57and cortisol, which is the stress hormone.

09:01So what we find is that high-power alpha males in primate hierarchies

09:08have high testosterone and low cortisol,

09:12and powerful and effective leaders

09:15also have high testosterone and low cortisol.

09:17So what does that mean? When you think about power,

09:20people tended to think only about testosterone,

09:22because that was about dominance.

09:24But really, power is also about how you react to stress.

09:27So do you want the high-power leader that's dominant,

09:30high on testosterone, but really stress reactive?

09:33Probably not, right?

09:35You want the person who's powerful and assertive and dominant,

09:38but not very stress reactive, the person who's laid back.

09:41So we know that in primate hierarchies,

09:47if an alpha needs to take over,

09:50if an individual needs to take over an alpha role sort of suddenly,

09:54within a few days, that individual's testosterone has gone up

09:57significantly and his cortisol has dropped significantly.

10:01So we have this evidence, both that the body can shape

10:04the mind, at least at the facial level,

10:06and also that role changes can shape the mind.

10:10So what happens, okay, you take a role change,

10:13what happens if you do that at a really minimal level,

10:15like this tiny manipulation, this tiny intervention?

10:18"For two minutes," you say, "I want you to stand like this,

10:21and it's going to make you feel more powerful."

10:23So this is what we did.

10:26We decided to bring people into the lab and run a little experiment,

10:31and these people adopted, for two minutes,

10:34either high-power poses or low-power poses,

10:38and I'm just going to show you five of the poses,

10:40although they took on only two.

10:42So here's one.

10:45A couple more.

10:47This one has been dubbed the "Wonder Woman" by the media.

10:51Here are a couple more.

10:53So you can be standing or you can be sitting.

10:55And here are the low-power poses.

10:57So you're folding up, you're making yourself small.

11:01This one is very low-power.

11:03When you're touching your neck, you're really protecting yourself.

11:07So this is what happens.

11:09They come in, they spit into a vial,

11:11for two minutes, we say, "You need to do this or this."

11:14They don't look at pictures of the poses.

11:16We don't want to prime them with a concept of power.

11:19We want them to be feeling power.

11:21So two minutes they do this.

11:22We then ask them, "How powerful do you feel?" on a series of items,

11:25and then we give them an opportunity to gamble,

11:28and then we take another saliva sample.

11:30That's it. That's the whole experiment.

11:32So this is what we find.

11:34Risk tolerance, which is the gambling,

11:36we find that when you are in the high-power pose condition,

11:4086 percent of you will gamble.

11:42When you're in the low-power pose condition,

11:44only 60 percent, and that's a whopping significant difference.

11:48Here's what we find on testosterone.

11:51From their baseline when they come in,

11:53high-power people experience about a 20-percent increase,

11:56and low-power people experience about a 10-percent decrease.

12:01So again, two minutes, and you get these changes.

12:04Here's what you get on cortisol.

12:06High-power people experience about a 25-percent decrease,

12:10and the low-power people experience about a 15-percent increase.

12:14So two minutes lead to these hormonal changes

12:17that configure your brain

12:18to basically be either assertive, confident and comfortable,

12:23or really stress-reactive, and feeling sort of shut down.

12:28And we've all had the feeling, right?

12:30So it seems that our nonverbals do govern how we think and feel about ourselves,

12:36so it's not just others, but it's also ourselves.

12:38Also, our bodies change our minds.

12:40But the next question, of course,

12:43is, can power posing for a few minutes

12:45really change your life in meaningful ways?

12:47This is in the lab, it's this little task, it's just a couple of minutes.

12:51Where can you actually apply this?

12:53Which we cared about, of course.

12:55And so we think where you want to use this is evaluative situations,

13:01like social threat situations.

13:04Where are you being evaluated, either by your friends?

13:07For teenagers, it's at the lunchroom table.

13:09For some people it's speaking at a school board meeting.

13:13It might be giving a pitch or giving a talk like this

13:17or doing a job interview.

13:19We decided that the one that most people could relate to

13:22because most people had been through, was the job interview.

13:25So we published these findings,

13:28and the media are all over it,

13:29and they say, Okay, so this is what you do

13:32when you go in for the job interview, right?

13:34(Laughter)

13:35You know, so we were of course horrified, and said,

13:37Oh my God, no, that's not what we meant at all.

13:39For numerous reasons, no, don't do that.

13:42Again, this is not about you talking to other people.

13:44It's you talking to yourself.

13:46What do you do before you go into a job interview? You do this.

13:49You're sitting down. You're looking at your iPhone --

13:52or your Android, not trying to leave anyone out.

13:54You're looking at your notes,

13:56you're hunching up, making yourself small,

13:58when really what you should be doing maybe is this,

14:00like, in the bathroom, right? Do that. Find two minutes.

14:03So that's what we want to test. Okay?

14:05So we bring people into a lab,

14:07and they do either high- or low-power poses again,

14:10they go through a very stressful job interview.

14:13It's five minutes long. They are being recorded.

14:16They're being judged also,

14:18and the judges are trained to give no nonverbal feedback,

14:23so they look like this.

14:25Imagine this is the person interviewing you.

14:27So for five minutes, nothing, and this is worse than being heckled.

14:31People hate this.

14:33It's what Marianne LaFrance calls "standing in social quicksand."

14:37So this really spikes your cortisol.

14:39So this is the job interview we put them through,

14:41because we really wanted to see what happened.

14:43We then have these coders look at these tapes, four of them.

14:46They're blind to the hypothesis. They're blind to the conditions.

14:49They have no idea who's been posing in what pose,

14:52and they end up looking at these sets of tapes,

14:57and they say, "We want to hire these people,"

15:00all the high-power posers.

15:01"We don't want to hire these people.

15:03We also evaluate these people much more positively overall."

15:07But what's driving it?

15:08It's not about the content of the speech.

15:10It's about the presence that they're bringing to the speech.

15:13Because we rate them on all these variables

15:16related to competence, like, how well-structured is the speech?

15:19How good is it? What are their qualifications?

15:22No effect on those things. This is what's affected.

15:24These kinds of things.

15:26People are bringing their true selves, basically.

15:28They're bringing themselves.

15:30They bring their ideas, but as themselves,

15:32with no, you know, residue over them.

15:34So this is what's driving the effect, or mediating the effect.

15:39So when I tell people about this,

15:42that our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behavior,

15:46and our behavior can change our outcomes, they say to me,

15:49"It feels fake." Right?

15:50So I said, fake it till you make it.

15:52It's not me.

15:54I don't want to get there and then still feel like a fraud.

15:57I don't want to feel like an impostor.

15:59I don't want to get there only to feel like I'm not supposed to be here.

16:03And that really resonated with me,

16:05because I want to tell you a little story about being an impostor

16:08and feeling like I'm not supposed to be here.

16:11When I was 19, I was in a really bad car accident.

16:14I was thrown out of a car, rolled several times.

16:17I was thrown from the car.

16:19And I woke up in a head injury rehab ward,

16:22and I had been withdrawn from college,

16:24and I learned that my IQ had dropped by two standard deviations,

16:30which was very traumatic.

16:32I knew my IQ because I had identified with being smart,

16:35and I had been called gifted as a child.

16:37So I'm taken out of college, I keep trying to go back.

16:41They say, "You're not going to finish college.

16:43Just, you know, there are other things for you to do,

16:45but that's not going to work out for you."

16:47So I really struggled with this, and I have to say,

16:51having your identity taken from you, your core identity,

16:54and for me it was being smart,

16:56having that taken from you,

16:57there's nothing that leaves you feeling more powerless than that.

17:00So I felt entirely powerless.

17:02I worked and worked, and I got lucky,

17:04and worked, and got lucky, and worked.

17:06Eventually I graduated from college.

17:08It took me four years longer than my peers,

17:10and I convinced someone, my angel advisor, Susan Fiske,

17:15to take me on, and so I ended up at Princeton,

17:17and I was like, I am not supposed to be here.

17:20I am an impostor.

17:22And the night before my first-year talk,

17:24and the first-year talk at Princeton is a 20-minute talk to 20 people.

17:27That's it.

17:28I was so afraid of being found out the next day

17:31that I called her and said, "I'm quitting."

17:34She was like, "You are not quitting,

17:35because I took a gamble on you, and you're staying.

17:38You're going to stay, and this is what you're going to do.

17:41You are going to fake it.

17:42You're going to do every talk that you ever get asked to do.

17:45You're just going to do it and do it and do it,

17:48even if you're terrified and just paralyzed

17:50and having an out-of-body experience,

17:52until you have this moment where you say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm doing it.

17:56Like, I have become this. I am actually doing this.'"

17:59So that's what I did.

18:00Five years in grad school,

18:01a few years, you know, I'm at Northwestern,

18:03I moved to Harvard, I'm at Harvard,

18:05I'm not really thinking about it anymore, but for a long time I had been thinking,

18:09"Not supposed to be here."

18:11So at the end of my first year at Harvard,

18:14a student who had not talked in class the entire semester,

18:18who I had said, "Look, you've gotta participate or else you're going to fail,"

18:22came into my office. I really didn't know her at all.

18:25She came in totally defeated, and she said,

18:28"I'm not supposed to be here."

18:35And that was the moment for me.

18:37Because two things happened.

18:38One was that I realized,

18:40oh my gosh, I don't feel like that anymore.

18:43I don't feel that anymore, but she does, and I get that feeling.

18:46And the second was, she is supposed to be here!

18:48Like, she can fake it, she can become it.

18:50So I was like, "Yes, you are! You are supposed to be here!

18:54And tomorrow you're going to fake it,

18:56you're going to make yourself powerful, and, you know --

18:58(Applause)

19:04And you're going to go into the classroom,

19:08and you are going to give the best comment ever."

19:10You know? And she gave the best comment ever,

19:13and people turned around and were like,

19:15oh my God, I didn't even notice her sitting there. (Laughter)

19:18She comes back to me months later,

19:20and I realized that she had not just faked it till she made it,

19:23she had actually faked it till she became it.

19:25So she had changed.

19:27And so I want to say to you, don't fake it till you make it.

19:31Fake it till you become it.

19:34Do it enough until you actually become it and internalize.

19:38The last thing I'm going to leave you with is this.

19:40Tiny tweaks can lead to big changes.

19:45So, this is two minutes.

19:47Two minutes, two minutes, two minutes.

19:49Before you go into the next stressful evaluative situation,

19:52for two minutes, try doing this, in the elevator,

19:55in a bathroom stall, at your desk behind closed doors.

19:58That's what you want to do.

20:00Configure your brain to cope the best in that situation.

20:03Get your testosterone up. Get your cortisol down.

20:05Don't leave that situation feeling like, oh, I didn't show them who I am.

20:09Leave that situation feeling like,

20:11I really feel like I got to say who I am and show who I am.

20:14So I want to ask you first, you know, both to try power posing,

20:20and also I want to ask you to share the science, because this is simple.

20:25I don't have ego involved in this. (Laughter)

20:27Give it away. Share it with people,

20:29because the people who can use it the most

20:31are the ones with no resources and no technology

20:35and no status and no power.

20:37Give it to them because they can do it in private.

20:40They need their bodies, privacy and two minutes,

20:42and it can significantly change the outcomes of their life.

20:45Thank you.

20:46(Applause)