Power poses aren't so powerful after all: Study

A new study has recently provided a deeper insight into how the power poses aren't so powerful after all.

Hands pressed to the hips or perhaps leaning back with arms crossed behind the head are typical poses of power. Referred to power poses or high status gestures in technical jargon, they are assumed to stimulate both psychological and physiological processes.

Researchers around Amy Cuddy of Harvard Business School concluded in a study in 2010 that power poses held for a short time influenced the hormones and the willingness to take on financial risks for the subjects participating in the study.

However, scientists of the University of Zurich now refute these findings with a large study: power poses neither affected the masculine hormone testosterone, the stress hormone cortisol, nor the subjects' actual behavior.

Bodily demonstrations of power, however, influence one's own perception of power, a result that the previous study also found.

Study leader Eva Ranehill of the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich stated that the main influence of power poses was the fact that subjects realized that they feel more self-confident; however, they found no proof that this has any effect on their behavior or their physiology.