Bears don’t high-five: know what the body posture has to say

So which one would you like to hug and say it’s ok baby, and which one is a “HELP I’M DYING” case?

Body posture is an element of nonverbal behaviour which not only affects how one perceives you but also can affect how your brain perceives yourself as well. In other words, by changing your posture you can in a way change the level of your hormones and how you feel about yourself. A person’s own behavior provides information about the person’s own attitude (Olson & Hafer, 1990).

So, let’s start with the interpersonal effect of your posture. Imagine you just saw a stupid person that is trying to persuade you that J.R.R Tolkien has written The Lord of the Rings based on Harry Potter, and no matter you give them all the reasons why this is not true, they’re still like Frodo is totally like Harry...when you’re speechless, you will stand there, heads up, shoulders back feet apart from each other, (you little thing, see me? I can break you into pieces!)

You see, this posture can also be seen in animals, like Gorillaz and bears when they wanna show that they are more powerful and that they can cut you into pieces! Also it’s suggested that when you wanna go to an interview it’s better if you have more of an upright posture, which can show your confident.

Dr. Amy Cuddy has done some awesome researches on posture and power posing. You can find her TED TALK here,

http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html

She also talks about how your upright superhero posture changes the level of hormones in your blood and makes you feel more confident about yourself. How does that work? I’ll tell you about a research which Dr. Strack and his colleagues conducted in 1988. Participants were told to hold a pencil between their teeth while performing a task that involved rating the degree of humor in cartoons. Holding the pencil in the mouth this way forced the individuals to smile. Other participants were instructed to hold the pencil between their lips without touching the pencil with their teeth and this forces the muscles to contract resulting in a frown. The authors hypothesized that participants who were led to smile would judge the cartoons as funnier than participants who were led to frown. Annnnd that was the result as well!

Also wanna change how you think? In a study by Petty & Cacioppo, (1986) they asked some people that were standing and some that were laying down to listen to a weak and strong argument. The ones that were standing showed no difference toward the two persuasive arguments while the reclined group responded differently to the the two arguments. That can imply that the reclined posture makes you, in simple words, think more!

Also one possibility is that posture may have affected information processing by influencing participants’ sense of power. That is, people in a standing posture are seen as (and may feel) more powerful than people who are seated, slumped over, or lying down (Briñol & Petty, 2008).

Standing people seem to be more dominant, and actually, people that are vertically higher are perceived to be more powerful (Schubert, 2005) and that influences both themselves and their audience. So, I suggest when you wanna make someone listen to you, find a chair stand on it, and start talking (isn’t that what mulla’s and all people that wanna give a speech do??). Weird thing is the power will reduce information processing :S

However, the power thingy is not only about height. When people expand themselves and take

up a lot of space, they are perceived as dominant, like when you see a guy leaning on his seat, having his arms on the other seat backs and his legs extended, usually these people have a higher status, whereas when they constrict themselves and take up little space, they are perceived as submissive, like a typical crossed leg lady with a lurch, holding hands (Argyle, 1988, Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1975).

Let's see who sits like a lady and who as if they own the world!

This article has been of great help, if you want to take a look at it:

Briñol, P; Petty, R.E; (2008), Embodied Persuasion: Fundamental Processes by Which Bodily Responses Can Impact Attitudes

So, guys, you see a bear like that, it’s trying to tell you something “You come close to me, I break your neck” and NO, he’s not high-fiving.