Don’t Do Power Poses Before Big Events (Unless They Help You Personally)
“Strength poses,” or the idea that mimicking powerful body language reduces stress and improves your performance in stressful situations, is something we’ve repeated several times . However, one of the leading researchers behind this idea has completely changed his mind, and we should do the same, unless of course it works for you.
Social psychologist Amy Cuddy, who first introduced the idea of strength poses a few years ago, worked with co-author Dana Carney. Carney recently turned around and said that, first, it’s nearly impossible to replicate research results that first confirmed their effectiveness, and second, she simply didn’t believe they were real – or that their effects were real – so she’s totally rejecting it. Science Of Us explains in their article (link below 🙂
Now we can add another researcher to the skeptic camp that will be difficult to ignore: one of the co-authors of the original article. Late last night, Carney, who is now a professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, posted on her website a document in what appears to be publicly expressing, for the first time, serious skepticism about power positions.
The key takeaway that she underlines and bolds for emphasis is, “I don’t believe the effects of power pose are real.” But Carney gives some really interesting details about how she came to that conclusion. She notes that while part of her skepticism stems from recent replication attempts, there were also decisions she, Cuddy, and Yap made as researchers that she regrets in retrospect.
Part of her explanation is that the study results were “p-hacked” because they were statistically altered to make the results appear more reliable and reliable than they actually were, but she also notes that too many study participants did know the hypothesis they tested, which in itself means the death of your results. In fact, that’s how good science is done: you have an idea, you prove it, and it seems to work, so you let people know. You keep testing, and if you are unable to reproduce the effects or think that the effects may have been caused by something else, you must admit this and the lack of evidence and change your story.
Bottom line, if you do power poses before big events, such as a presentation, speech, or other nervous event, and it really helps you, then there’s nothing to worry about. After all, people have been saying “pretend until it works” for longer than this study and its controversy, and you can feel the very powerful effects of psychological placebos . If that doesn’t work for you, or it doesn’t seem to help at all, that’s okay too – there is no science to argue that it should be.
Power Posing Co-Author: “I Don’t Believe Power Posing Effects Are Real” | Science about us