Psychology paper

Power Posing: Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance

Dana R. Carney, Amy J.C. Cuddy, Andy J. Yap · 2010

Read this as

New to this. Just the gist and why it matters.

How deep

The gist, about 2 minutes.

In one line

The short of it

The famous claim that standing in a powerful pose for two minutes changes your hormones and makes you bolder. It became a sensation, then largely failed to replicate. A useful case study in reading a paper critically.

Why it exists

The problem it tackles

The authors asked whether adopting expansive, open body postures (versus closed, contractive ones) could do more than signal power to others, whether it could actually change the poser's own body chemistry and behavior.

In plain words

The key idea

Hold a high-power posture for a couple of minutes and, the paper argues, your testosterone rises, your cortisol (a stress hormone) falls, and you become more willing to take risks. The body, in this telling, leads the mind.

Think of it like: Like claiming that puffing up your chest before a job interview does not just look confident, it reaches inside and turns confidence dials in your bloodstream.

What they did

The method

42 participants held either high-power or low-power poses for two minutes. The researchers measured saliva hormones before and after and gave a small gambling task.

What they found

The results

The original paper reported that power poses raised testosterone, lowered cortisol, and increased risk-taking.

Does it hold up?

The honest part. What is solid, and where to be careful.

Very small sample (42) for noisy hormonal measures.
Many outcomes and flexible, non-preregistered analysis inflate the chance of a false positive.
The headline hormonal and behavioral effects did not replicate in larger studies.

⚠ One of the original authors publicly disavowed the physiological effects and called the evidence not real.
⚠ The popular version (a two-minute pose changes your hormones and your life) is not supported by the stronger later evidence.
⚠ What survives is modest: adopting an expansive posture may make you feel a bit more confident, a self-report, not a hormonal change.

So what, for you

If you are a curious newcomer

You have probably heard the two-minute power pose advice. The honest update: it may make you feel a little more confident in the moment, but the dramatic hormone claims did not hold up. It is a good reminder that a viral idea is not the same as a proven one.