Acting Powerful Powers Action

How you sit and stand affects your ability to get things done.

We’ve all been told to stand up straight and not slouch when we sit. But new research suggests that good posture doesn’t just please your mother. It makes you more effective in handling everyday challenges. People who adopt “more powerful” stances actually feel more empowered and act more powerfully.

This has huge implications for parents, especially for parents of teens. While nagging might not be the preferred mode of encouragement, encouraging kids to inhabit their bodies comfortably can pay off in more dynamic action.

Researchers at the Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management compared body posture and social role on power-related behavior. They were astonished to find that in every case, having a higher social role was less important than acting as if one were of higher social role.

Participants were asked to sit in a chair in one of two ways. The power-posture involved sitting with one arm on the chair’s armrest and the other arm spread across the back of an adjoining chair, and with one ankle resting on the other thigh at right angles. Imagine a very casual and open sitting style. The other posture, a low-power posture, involved sitting with legs together and hands under the thighs (which also causes a drop in the shoulders). Imagine a closed, inhibited sitting style.

Participants were then asked to undertake various tasks, such as a word-completion exercise and a game of blackjack. Those sitting casually suggested more powerful words and took more risks in the card game than those sitting in a more closed position. It didn’t matter if the participants actually were of higher social rank (bosses, upperclassman, for example) or lower rank (minimum wage earner, freshman). How participants acted depended on how they sat.

Posture depends on how we feel in any particular setting but posture is also an effect of habit. Encouraging our kids (and ourselves) to feel more comfortable in an upright, open posture has possibilities for payoff in personal effectiveness.

 
Photo credit Photoscarce