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Welcome to ATP—All Things Psychology, a newsletter that brings research from Psychology & Neuroscience straight to your inbox, with one goal: To help you leverage science to improve your life.
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Today’s newsletter covers exciting new research on how body posture may influence certain feelings and behaviors and what these results could mean for everyday life.
I use a double-screen setup in my home office, with both screens positioned slightly above eye level (I would show you a photo but it's currently too chaotic 😉). I chose this setup mainly for ergonomic reasons because it’s more comfortable than hunching over for several hours every day.
But research shows that body posture can also influence psychological processes, such as how you feel or the risks you take.
Contractive versus expansive postures
The key distinction in research is between contractive and expansive postures. Contractive (as the name already suggests) means contracting your body, e.g., hunching over with rounded shoulders, whereas expansive postures are more open and upright.
Here’s a picture from a study showing both:
Caption: Expansive (left) and contractive (right) body posture. Source
In this study, participants who adopted an expansive posture scored higher than those in a contractive posture on self-perceived leadership. In other words, the expansive pose made them feel more like leaders, whereas the contractive pose had the opposite effect.
The problem of previous research and what a new study did differently
Some previous studies have measured and found an effect of body posture on psychological outcomes such as mood, risk-taking, and self-perceived leadership, as in the study mentioned above. However, results are mixed, and much of the research comes from the so-called “power posing” idea, a line of research in which participants adopt poses that symbolize power, which then affect their feelings and behavior.
One limitation of studies that explicitly instruct participants to adopt a certain pose is that some may realize what the researchers are testing. This could mean that previous results were influenced by demand characteristics; the phenomenon that participants feel they need to behave or respond in a certain way due to the study’s procedures.
Because honestly, if you participate in a study and they ask you to pose like in the pictures below, and then they want to know how you feel or how you evaluate your leadership skills, you might think they’re expecting you to respond in a certain way, don’t you?
Examples of power poses. Source
And that’s what the researchers in this new study did differently.
The study
Instead of asking participants to pose in a certain way, as in previous studies, they were invited to complete a few tasks on a tablet.
The catch:
For some participants, the tablet was placed on a table and mounted on a stand slightly above eye level. This position encouraged participants to sit upright and adopt an expansive posture.
For the other participants, the tablet was placed flat on a lower table, just above their knees. This positioning caused them to hunch over, making it the contractive condition.
This clever procedure made the posture manipulation less obvious.
On the tablet, participants had to complete a few questionnaires and play a virtual balloon game designed to measure risk-taking. They could earn in-game currency by inflating a balloon but risked losing the accumulated amount if it burst.
Two results stood out for the people in the expansive condition:
They reported stronger feelings of pride, including feeling more accomplished, confident, and successful than those in the contractive group.
They took more risks in the balloon game than those in the contractive condition. But this wasn’t an impulsive move: their earnings were, on average, slightly higher than in the contractive group.
The researchers also repeated their data analysis, excluding all participants who suspected anything about the posture manipulation (despite the clever approach, some participants were still suspicious), and it didn’t change the results, which strengthens their findings.
What the results mean for everyday life
This recent study, together with previous research on the subject, shows that minding your posture makes sense not just from an ergonomic but also from a psychological perspective.
However, your posture is one of many factors that influence how you feel and behave, so changing your posture won’t radically change your life, but it may subtly influence your feelings or decisions.
Jorge Armony from McGill University and senior author of the study said:
“The findings do not mean that changing posture can dramatically transform a person’s life, but it does raise interesting questions about whether everyday features of our environment – such as workplace ergonomics – can subtly influence mood and behavior.”
So before making an important decision while you’re in a contractive posture (e.g., hunched over your phone), it could make sense to switch to an expansive posture to think about it a little more.
What else I’ve been up to:
If you’ve ever wondered whether using AI could make you stupid, you should read my new Medium article that explains why the answer isn’t a simple “yes” or “no” and what the research really says.
Read it here:
Contains a friend link at the top so you can read it even if you’re not a Medium member.
That’s it for today!
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Until next time!
Best wishes,
Patricia (Dr. Patricia Schmidt) from creatorschmidt.com
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