Reading people is more than just gesture and expression. It also involves posture. This blog tends to focus primarily on gestures and expressions, and we have delved only occasionally into the importance of posture in expressing or detecting various affective states.
However, in a comprehensive review of research on nonverbal postures, Dr. Amy Cuddy and her fellow researchers detailed the persistent role of powerful postures in everyday interaction.
While a previous meta-analysis failed to find significant effects, Dr. Cuddy’s project dramatically expanded that dataset to better understand how postures can change an individual’s feeling of power.
This is a critically important topic to both social psychology and to efforts to study people’s thoughts and feelings. The feeling of personal importance, the authors maintain, has fundamental ramifications in understanding “what it is like to be a person” or in other words understanding how people really feel. The ramifications are endless both in deception detection (Is a person lying?) and in people reading (Is this person comfortable? Do they like me? Are they a threat?)
This study specifically looked at different postures that were either expansive or closed. Such postures involve more than just where the head was held but included questions of limb orientation, the openness of the chest and shoulders, and combinations of all of these factors.
After reviewing over fifty studies that examined this question, Dr. Cuddy’s team concluded that there was consistent support for the idea that certain postures led to greater feelings of power. The adoption of an expansive posture, with shoulders back and head up, for instance, is a strong expression of power, and this study helps support the contention that those exhibiting this pose tend to feel more powerful.
It is important to note the causal relationship identified here. Such postures are not necessarily a sign of such a feeling but lead to that underlying emotion. This does not attempt to determine why such postures are adopted to begin with, but it is still crucially important to reading people who showcase such a posture: if it leads to a certain emotion, they are probably feeling that while in that posture.
Similarly, interrogation and similar situations cannot be seen outside of the context of power. When a person feels powerless, they act in fundamentally different ways, especially with regard to the level of truth or insight into their emotions that they are trying to showcase. Hopefully further research delves into this important application.
Still, the fundamental association with postures and power will not be unknown to regular followers of this blog. For example, recall the discussion of triumphant poses by Olympic victors, and look at the illustration in that article. Doesn’t that look a great deal like an open posture? The head is thrown back, the arms are out wide, and the chest is thrust forward. Certainly such an individual feels very powerful indeed.
While more focus needs to be channeled into better understanding the role of postures in effective interpersonal communication, it is just one of many universal gestures and signs that help us know what other people are thinking. Many of Humintell’s training programs incorporate posture into a broader discussion of gestures, expressions, and even gait!