The power of posture

How you hold yourself affects how you view yourself

See article

Readers' comments




Sounds like a classic example of the post hoc fallacy?

A critic would say: the students sit upright BECAUSE they are more confident (and therefore ALSO score higher on the completion task). Instead, the study concludes that they are more confident BECAUSE of their posture.

In fact, as someone who is both a dancer and psychologist, I would tend to say that there is a feedback cycle between the emotive state and the physical position, so the arrow of causality cannot be traced univocally.



It may well be that the clear-cut conclusions presented in the article are not warranted from the data, but your particular complaint about the postures doesn't seem right to me. They were *assigned* a position to sit in, they didn't just assume that which felt natural to them.


So there were 77 undergraduate students and the "test included equal numbers of those who would become “managers” and “subordinates”" Whom did you guys cut in half? Sorry couldn't resist!

patrick veale

This is yet another bull piece of research that gets funded because it is is meaningless. Academia is out of touch with reality, because it is paid to be so...

Lapsed economist

My mistake. It appears that the study particiapnts were randomly assigned to one of the two postures. That strengthens the possible posture-confidence link. It's still an unrepresentative sample and to simple an explanation. It it were that easy all therapists will need to do is tell their depressed patients to stand up straight.

Daily events will affect posture as well. If your wife just died in your arms will you strut proudly to the next meeting? If you just won the World Cup will you walk with slumped shoulders?

Posture both reflects and influences attitude.

Lapsed economist

The researchers have confused correlation with causation. The more confident students may be the ones who sit upright. Attitiude may be influencing posture not the other way around.

An unrepresentative sample (undegraduate students)and a simple correlation. Shoddy research that shouldn't be reported on at all.


What does this study (and thousands of others) tell me ? The American undergraduate student is the best-researched human being in the world.
And his researchers are a bunch of ignorants.


Hogwash. Chair sitting does not count. Standing does.

This I know: People who have poor posture (slouched, rounded shoulders) look old before their time.

Furthermore, this is news? My mom suggested I practice walking with a book on my head when I was a child; many, many moons ago. It is a simple skill that lasts a lifetime. I am tall and would look like h*ll if I slouched.

How do people get the bucks for such feeble research? Shame on them.


Obviously the statement from the very first paragraph is something that is generally accepted to be true:

"Big is dominant and in species after species, humans included, postures that enhance the posturer’s apparent size cause others to treat him as if he were more powerful."

Completely agree.

The world's population is roughly 50% male and 50% female. Now think about (apparent) physical size. Now think about who wields the power in this world.

Any further questions?

Yes. Why not spend the research money for...


Utterly narrow-minded. Never mind the logical fallacy pointed out in these comments.

Which of our great painters had wonderful posture? Or writers? Or maybe they mean leadership, as in Rudyard Kipling, writer of racist paraphernalia, got his own son killed in that War To End All Wars he so loudly advocated.

Sometimes being shy, reticent, gloomy, etc. are very worthwhile values. Perhaps a magazine like the Economist doesn't think so, but wouldn't it have been good thing if Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini had slightly worse posture (and so, we assume, less leaderly qualities)?


Isn't this a case of mistaking correlation with causality -- a fallacy warned against in many freshman-level introductory psychology textbooks?

Maybe the article could likewise be erroneously re-titled as "How you view yourself affects how you hold yourself".



yes you're right, my mistake for reading in a hurry.
So yes, the methodology makes more sense now. Still quite a primitive way to study a very complex and subtle phenomenon.


"This required them to sit in a computer chair in a specific posture for between three and five minutes. Half the participants sat in constricted postures, with their hands under their thighs, legs together or shoulders hunched. The other half sat in expansive postures with their legs spread wide or their arms reaching outward."

Like another reader, I also missed that the "specific postures" were required to be "their hands under their thighs, legs together or shoulders hunched" or "their legs spread wide or their arms reaching outward."

However, this leads to another complicating factor -- people who voluntarily choose "constricted" postures, as opposed to people are required to do so (as in this experiment). Maybe it is the constriction requirement (not merely the constricted posture itself) that causes the observed effect.

Bronson C

Hmm, sadly, I don't think the rational changes anything. I've heard, by word of mouth, something along the lines of "more intelligent people tend to exercise more", that said though, the fact that one exercises more is simply a byproduct of their intelligence, and not in and of itself why they are intelligent.

Is the same thing not to be send then, abut one's confidence and their posture?


For lead and load perhaps some people just ran through the alphabet and came to "e" first, so sitting up straight just makes you intellectually lazy.



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