Dominant And Submissive Postures Affects More Than Public Perception – It Also Affects Felt Pain And Physical Strength
Christopher Philip
According to researchers Vanessa Bohns, J. L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and Scott Wiltermuth, School of Business, University of Southern California, pain and strength can be significantly reduced by posture alone.
Pain is an interesting beast. Not only is it particularly distressing, it turns out that pain is highly subjective and is influenced by many factors. Experienced pain is highly physiological but also rooted in psychology and context.
In the current research it was postulated that by simply adopting certain physical postures, or interacting with others who adopted these postures that felt pain and strength would be affected. The research builds upon studies conducted previously which found that adopting dominant postures lead to increases in levels of testosterone.
The authors note that “Across species, individuals who are physically strong and/or “alpha” members of the social pecking order typically signal their power through expansive postures that take up more space and intrude into others’ personal territory.”
When posture affects the mind and body it is referred to as “embodied.” Interestingly power is likely bidirectional, that is, it may be a two-way street. Thus, not only does postural expansion such as puffing the chest out and placing the hands akimbo lead to increased felt power, but also increase actual power. Conversely, adopting opposite postures by constricting the body, leads to feelings of helplessness and also less power.
Say the authors “Given that posing as if one possesses power produces many of the same effects as actually possessing power, and that possessing power heightens perceptions of control and self-efficacy that decrease one’s sensitivity to pain, adopting postures associated with dominance should reduce sensitivity to pain.”
They continue “Thus, power-approach theory would also predict that low-power individuals should exhibit lower pain tolerance.”
The current research tested whether “power posing” influences pain thresholds in two ways. The first experiment tested pain thresholds after adopting certain power poses to see if they would increase or decrease. In the second experiment subjects were placed in accompaniment with a confederate displaying submissive postures to induce them to adopt complimentary dominant postures to test the effects on pain threshold once again. It was hypothesized that a similar increase in pain threshold would surface.
In the first experiment 89 subjects were told that they were participating in a study about the health benefits of exercise at work and that they would be performing a series of yoga poses. Participants were assigned one of three conditions: an expansive posture associated with dominance, a constricted posture associated with submissiveness, or control condition.
The expansive poses consisted of arms expanded out to the side with legs spread open standing.
The contracted pose had subjects sit down on the ground with their shins and knees on the ground with their hands resting on their lap.
The control pose had subjects stand with their arms to their sides.
Pain threshold was tested first with the help of a tourniquet technique. Here the blood pressure cuff was placed on the subjects and the experimenter slowly and steadily increased the pressure until the subject instructed the experimenter to stop. The pain threshold was recorded as millimeters of mercury or mmHg which is the traditional unit used to measure blood pressure.
Once the baseline measure of pain was recorded, the subjects were instructed to carry their “yoga” pose for twenty seconds after which they repeated the pain test a second time. This gave the researchers a relative change in pain tolerances.
In the second experiment, the subjects were induced to create their own posture without being directly manipulated. To do so, a confederate worked with them a task which was described as a “relaxation exercise” that required them to look at a series of nature photographs. In half the sessions, the confederate displayed dominant body language, and in the other, submissive body language. Previous research has shown that when one party acts dominant, the other party tends to compliment their body language and act submissively. Likewise, when one party acts submissively, the other acts dominant.
The confederate in the dominant condition maintained open postures, spoke loudly, and reduced physical space between themselves and the subject. In the submissive condition, the confederate used closed body postures, spoke softly, and maintained physical distance between them and the subject. In each condition, participants in the study interacted with interacted with members of their own sex.
This experiment assumed that participants who interacted with the submissive confederate would adopt complimentary postures and act dominant with the result being higher pain threshold. Measures of pain tolerance were calculated both before and after the introduction of the confederate. Grip strength was also measured.
In both experiments it was found that “power posing” was associated with higher pain thresholds. This was the case when subjects were either instructed to do so or adopted the poses spontaneously when exposed to a partner’s behaviour.
According to the researchers, this has important implications in the management of pain. For example, doctors may benefit from behaving more submissively to attract dominant behaviour from their patients. Alternatively, adopting power poses might generate more confident feelings about their pain even if patients feel that they can not control it.
In general, the results show that power posing has real life implications. It makes people not only feel more powerful, but also act more powerfully by boosting their tolerance to pain. The reverse trend is also true which we see with submissive constrictive postures.
Resources
Bohns, Vanessa K. and Scott S. Wiltermuth. It Hurts When I Do This (Or You Do That): Posture And Pain tolerance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2019. 48: 341-345.
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