Posture Affects Confidence Of Thoughts
Christopher Philip
By adopting an upright posture, the brain receives a boost in confidence over adopting a slouched posture.
If you have spent any time reading about nonverbal communication, you understand full well the implications of body language on our internal state. How we carry our bodies – our postures – has a great deal of power over our feelings. Resent research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology has found more evidence of the brain-body link – “embodiment.”
Researchers Pablo Brin, Richard Petty from Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain and Benjamin Wagner Ohio State University, Columbus, USA tested two postures to examine how it influenced confidence.
Upon entering the lab, subjects were asked to adopt one of two body posture. In one condition, the subjects were asked to “sit straight up and push out their chest.” In the other condition, subjects were instructed to “sit slouched forward with their face looking at their knees.” The subjects were part of a rouse – the researchers told them that the “School of Arts wished to determine the factors contributing to individuals’ acting abilities.” They were told they should adopt the postures in an “exaggerated way.”
As part of the study, the subjects never heard that words “confident” or “doubtful” so they were not primed in one way or the other. The ruse continued with a cover story:
“As you might know, acting usually requires control of body muscles in order to create specific impressions in different scenes. Being able to sustain a body posture while thinking or talking requires certain skills and training. Individuals often differ in their abilities to perform these types of roles. The present part of the research has been designed to gain some insights regarding this issue. In order to examine your ability to perform body poses, the present part of the research is going to require you to position part of your body while you focus on a different, unrelated mental task (the study for the business school). In the following screen you will find a description of the body pose we would like you to enact. Please pay close attention to the instructions.”
While the subjects held their “confident” or “doubtful” postures, the participants were asked to list three positive or three negative personal traits related to future professional performance.
The results where assessed over attitudes, thoughts, mood, and thought confidence. They found that participants who listed three positive characteristics were more favourable about their future professional success than those who listed three negative characteristics. Posture played a role in this effect. Those who adopted a confident posture, but not the doubtful posture, held more positive attitudes.
Body posture, however, had no effect on other factors on thoughts. That is, people responded the same with respect to length, extremity, or abstractness of their descriptions, no matter what posture they held. More importantly, body posture had a significant effect on thought confidence. The upright posture was associated with greater confidence than the slouched postures.
The study provides more evidence that body posture affects the brain. By adopting an upright posture, the brain receives a boost in confidence over adopting a slouched posture. What’s important to note, however, is that posture isn’t enough to alter other factors significantly – at least the ones measured in this study.
If one wishes to boost confidence, rolling the shoulders back, pushing the chest out and holding the chin high is enough to produce the desired affect.
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Resources
Pablo Brin and Oli Richard. Body posture effects on self-evaluation: A self-validation approach. European Journal of Social Psychology. 2019; 39: 1053–1064.
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