• DOI:10.1177/0956797614553946
• Corpus ID: 28372856

Assessing the Robustness of Power Posing

@article{Ranehill2015AssessingTR,
  title={Assessing the Robustness of Power Posing},
  author={Eva Ranehill and Anna Dreber and Magnus Johannesson and Susanne Leiberg and Sunhae Sul and Roberto A. Weber},
  journal={Psychological Science},
  year={2015},
  volume={26},
  pages={653 - 656}
}

• Eva Ranehill, Anna Dreber, +3 authors Roberto A. Weber
• Published 25 March 2015
• Psychology
• Psychological Science

In a growing body of research, psychologists have studied how physical expression influences psychological processes (see Riskind & Gotay, 1982; Stepper & Strack, 1993, for early contributions to this literature). A recent strand of literature within this field has focused on how physical postures that express power and dominance (power poses) influence psychological and physiological processes, as well as decision making (e.g., Carney, Cuddy, & Yap, 2010; Cesario & McDonald, 2013; Yap, Wazlawek, Lucas, Cuddy, & Carney, 2013). Carney et al. found that power posing affected levels of hormones such as testosterone and cortisol, financial risk taking, and self-reported feelings of power in a sample of 42 participants (randomly assigned to hold poses suggesting either high or low power). We conducted a conceptual replication study with a similar methodology as that employed by Carney et al. but using a substantially larger sample (N = 200) and a design in which the experimenter was blind to condition. Our statistical power to detect an effect of the magnitude reported by Carney et al. was more than 95% (see the Supplemental Material available online). In addition to the three outcome measures that Carney et al. used, we also studied two more behavioral tasks (risk taking in the loss domain and willingness to compete). Consistent with the findings of Carney et al., our results showed a significant effect of power posing on self-reported feelings of power. However, we found no significant effect of power posing on hormonal levels or in any of the three behavioral tasks.