Episode 79: TED Talkin’: Amy Cuddy’s “Power Poses” and the impact of body language

Molly Geoghegan 00:00

And so I, I want to say to you Don't fake it till you make it, fake it till you become it Welcome back to presentation thinking the podcast where we're thinking about presentations talking about presentations. And the voice you've just heard was one of the most amazing presenters of TED talk time. Amy Cuddy, PhD and author, speaker social psychologist, Amy's TED talk has been on our list to be Ted talking about for some time. And I'm honestly a little bummed that we took so long to make it but nevertheless, here we are. So you're listening to presentation thinking. I'm your host, one of your hosts, Molly, Gagan content and Community Manager for presentation thinking and Ghostwatch communications. The presentation design agency, my co host Mikey would do ski is out on sabbatical, you know, just resting and resetting, getting his mind fresh to come back and continue talking about presentations with me. But until then, I'm going to be doing a TED talk in episode if you haven't tuned in one of these before. We obviously you know, here as at the presentation, scullery mastery, are leaning into TED talks, some of the most popular some of the most famous and most viewed really of all time to learn from, and we really analyze both what the speaker is talking about, and the way they present the way they use slides, the way they hold themselves. And this one is especially apt for the way that you hold yourself today. Because Amy Cuddy, if you're familiar, her talk from TEDGlobal 2012, is called your body language may shape who you are. So this is all about how your body language can really affect the way in which you hold yourself the way you talk, the way you go into an interview. As a social psychologist, she studies a lot of these nonverbal communication. So we have a similar episode, Vanessa Van Edwards, and another amazing psychologist who talks about nonverbal communication. We talked about her in Episode 11, another TED Talk and episode you are contagious. Now what to do about it. And it's all about how your body language and how you present yourself really affects other people around you. So Amy Cuddy, PhD, amazing doctor and deadhead. So I found out on her Instagram, like this, so begins her talk by inviting everyone to think about their body posture. And she invites them to change however, they're sitting in the chair for two minutes. And she doesn't circle back to this, but you can see everyone kind of moving around being like, Oh, she's actually perceiving us, right? She's the speaker. They're the audience. Right? And she to prove her point about, you know, we're interested in people's body language, she starts to show awkward pictures of like, Angela Merkel, Sarah Palin, Obama. And of course, like, I'm thinking, there's so much celebrity culture as well that we analyze as a society where we're just looking at people's like, all of a kind of cool handshake from this person. And then that person you know, I'm thinking of like the Harry Styles thing of at the Italy premiere of Don't worry darling, where it looked as if he was that he spat upon was his face, Chris Hemsworth, or whatever it was, or Brett and Brad Pitt there was there too. And like all these people, just analyzing what went down in those few seconds of a tiny tiny clip just circling the internet. So anyway, me pop culture person just thinking about all the ways in which we analyze, analyze body language is really important. She also says that there's this amazing Princeton study, in which it determined that a one second video of someone running for political office and their face will determine the race outcome 70% of the time, right. Emoticons emojis, also used in online negotiations can help you claim more money. If used poorly, it can also go the opposite direction, but used successfully. The use of emojis aka body expressive things that are nonverbal communication can help you pay more money. So she goes through these kinds of ideas to establish that by language is important. We pay attention to it, whether you realize it or not. And before she gets to a an introduction of herself at minute 333, I believe it is where she starts to say, I'm a social psychologist, I study prejudice, and I teach at a business school. So obviously, I've been interested in thoughts, feelings and physiology for a long time. And I'll take a brief pause here to go on my own Wikipedia of Amy Cuddy, where I learned that her books of which there are four right now with an upcoming one this next year on bullying, what makes people you know, subjected to bullying or targets for bullying, right? And the social contracts and all the dynamics around that again, power dynamics is what she's studying here. She Her books are often about prisons. So her first one was prisons unlock your intercom confidence and leadership presence and then an on public speaking and presenting. And finally, most recently, last year, there was a book called when they trust you, they hear you a modern guide for speaking to any audience. So adding that she's been featured on the Harvard Business Review list, featured in The New York Times. And she's also credited with researching and crediting power posing, right kind of the Wonder Woman power pose, to increasing your confidence, increasing the way once you grow, but the world, etc, etc. And that's what's to MIT the main meat of her talk here. So we can circle back to that, but amazing author, speaker and person for all of these really interesting communication cues. We talk a lot on the cast about what to include when you actually are presenting. But this is something really interesting about what to do before presenting, if you aren't accustomed to presenting and getting yourself some more confidence, some awesome advice. So back to her TED Talk. So at minute, three and a half, she's introduced herself. And she said, she's always been interested in these power dynamics, and expressions of power and dominance. So to illustrate this, she doesn't have a lot of slides so far, right. But her first image that she shows is a gorilla, and a couple of animal photos, because power dynamics and expressions of power with like, arms outstretched and everything exists in the animal kingdom. And that's how animals communicate a lot of times, especially interspecies, right, and I'm thinking as well as someone that likes to go hiking. And if you encounter a bear or a mountain lion, the first thing you're told to do is not run because that will indicate prey, that's a prey indicator. But pull your hands and your arms out, if you're wearing a jacket, turn it, flip it inside out, make yourself as big as possible so that you indicate that you are big, you are more powerful than them. And that you are, you know, you see them and you're not running from them. Right. So kind of really interesting use of images there where it's just like, not really slides, just kind of a nice Swan cobra pose and a couple other gorilla images to illustrate this power dynamic. Then she shows an image of Oprah and Jagger, Oprah, you know, just power posing all the time, basically, especially with how successful she has been. And then Mick Jagger on stage with his you know, arms outstretched as always, right. So she also shows like an athlete celebrating pride pose. So these are all things that indicate that person is prideful, confident, successful, excited, like maybe the center or comfortable being the center of attention, right. So just again, illustrating her point that we do this, whether we realize it or not, we're always communicating with our bodies in any kind of way. So she also says that we don't really mirror people, we tend to do the opposite, right. So if someone if we're with someone that has really big power dynamics, their legs outstretched, their arms outstretched, maybe on a public train, there's tons of people taking up space, you're gonna make yourself smaller, you tend to do the opposite. And if you mirror them, if you do the same, it's often an uncomfortable situation, right? Where you kind of are like meeting power with power or small, small and there's like more space to take up. So she observes students in her class, doing these kinds of things as well. I couldn't imagine being in her class and just being perceived at all times. Her expert mind analyzing my every move, really, you know, she says, of course, you know, women tend to make themselves smaller and speaking, asking questions, there's a gender divide in this, this has been proven, this is not her point. But this definitely also extended to which the extent students were participating in the class, which in a Master's class is a big deal, because participation is half your grade. I remember, I don't know if it's half of my grade, but it's definitely a big piece of it. And so kind of being like, Did I talk today, it was always something you're asking yourself, and especially if you didn't, didn't read or on Pay attention, like, okay, shit, we'll have to do that next time. Right? So you show up a little bit more? And I would even think about that being like, How many times should I be raising my hand? Is it too much is it like, you know, you want to take over you give other people chances don't want to be that person in the classroom. But so even thinking about like, the way in which I participated, verbally, taking up space for other people, non verbally, raising hands, etc. Hermione is someone that uses a lot of nonverbal and verbal communication to take up space, right. But it also indicates how people feel about her. So her study question was, can we know that nonverbals govern how we think and feel about other people, right? She's made that point where, you know, we respond to people's nonverbals we react and have feelings about the way in which they take up space, you know, are they annoying about it? Are they really inspiring? Are they fun and creative? Or do you not even notice them? Because they're so small, right? And but her silly question that she starts to wonder, is do our nonverbals govern how we think and feel about ourselves? This in her presentation is one of the first tech slides that she actually puts up the study questions so we can all kind of participate at this point. I think we're about a minute five and a half hair once her actual study begins. So can you fake it till you make it? Can our bodies change our minds? And what she means by that is by practicing powerful nonverbal communications can We actually feel about ourselves that we are powerful or more dominant. She discusses a little bit about cortisol, the stress hormone, and testosterone being the power and dominance hormone. And wanting to use those as some measurements to know if power poses and doing nonverbal, powerful communication can either increase or decrease those hormones. Right. So she illustrates the next images on her slides are things we've all seen high power and low power poses, she identifies these, the high power pose with like sitting back in your office chair with your feet up, or your hands on your hips and feeling like really strong and powerful shoulders back, she calls that the Wonder Woman pose. So just picture wonder woman standing really strong, also, like legs spread. And you know, I'm thinking again, on public transit manspreading, right, just kind of this unconscious, like taking up of space, where people just really are like spreading out and are comfortable with that those are high power poses or low power poses are associated with being slumped over, your arms kind of clasped around each other. Touching your neck while you're talking is a super low power pose, because you're protecting like a really important and vulnerable part of your body. Something I do all the time actually while talking. But just because I think I'm at a desk, but I don't know, maybe I should analyze it a little bit more. How are you guys sitting right now? I wonder, as I'm talking. So yeah, she identifies these two different poses. And this is what her study involves, right is having people do these poses for two minutes. And the thing that they ask people to do after those two minutes is to gamble, person come in, which is something that happens completely by chance. So whether or not it's like a skill or confidence thing that you have gambling is like, totally a chance thing, right? So 86 versus 60% of the people or I should say the people that did high power poses are 86% more likely to feel confident in gambling, they were asked of how confident they feel, how much they're going to put out how much money they're going to put out, and what they're going to do in their like camp. I'm not sure what game they had them do, I'd be curious to know, because I think it kind of varies per game, maybe it was just total chance slots game, right. So we'll just say it's something like that, where 86% of the people after doing the high power pose felt very confident to go in and gamble. Whereas 60% of the low power pose folks felt confident to be like, maybe like we'll spend a little less money, not super stoked to go gambling today. And in addition to that, they measured their testosterone and their cortisol levels after doing the two minute poses. And there was a 20% increase in testosterone and a 10% decrease in testosterone for the low power poses. So very, a pretty significant increase versus decrease there. And then cortisol, which is your stress level, also increased for the low power poses and decrease for the high power poses. So less stress, more dominance, and more confidence overall, to go be able to do something kind of random. That might not involve any skill, but you feel more confident, regardless after doing a high power pose. So this was a really cool study. I'm not exactly sure what year she had done this if she's speaking in 2012. But she basically from her hypothesis, can you fake it till you make it? Can your body change your mind? Our bodies can change our minds with the ways in which we pose then she shifts after that she's like, but this is just one example. Right? This is kind of like just a little gambling example, can this actually be applied to our lives in meaningful ways. So they do another similar study. And this was a little more involved. They had people go into a five minute stressful job interview with judges that were trained to give no nonverbal feedback. So she shows what an example of this one of the judges looked like, with no facial expression, no warmth, but also not really being cold either. And one of her colleagues called that like social quicksand, you know, when like, no one's responding to you, like, much like I'm speaking, you know, into a microphone giving a podcast now, it's a little weird. Like, I'm not receiving anything, but I'm kind of pretending that I'm in a conversation, right? So it's weird, but like in the tics kind of practice, but these judges were trained to give no nonverbal feedback. Okay, so imagine just doing a job interview. And this person is just like, totally blank, blinking you blank stare and you the whole time, and they videoed, and then they had Cotard without any context, look at the videos and decide who they wanted to hire. And without any exceptions, the coders chose to hire the people that had done High Power Poses over the people that had done low power poses. So before this five minutes, stressful job interview, the people that did low power poses came in and were very affected, obviously, by this nonverbal feedback. And the people that did High Power Poses were able to exude more presence with enthusiasm, passion, confidence, authenticity. The comfort and being captivating. Those are all the items she lists associated with giving presents, right. And that's what her first book is about selection makes a lot of sense. We talked about that all the time on presentation thinking if you don't, if you're enthusiastic about what you're talking about, if you aren't passionate, if you aren't confident, like you don't know what you're talking about. And if you aren't just like being yourself being comfortable, then you won't be captivating. You want people to be able to remember that. And it's easy to see through as an audience. You know, it's easy to see through as a job interviewer who's like, trained to look for that, right. So that was really cool. I liked that study even more than the gambling one, because it's definitely such a clear indicator in these poses kind of helping someone work through what would be a very stressful five minutes, right. So this is the majority of her TED talk is going through this study kind of proving her point with the camera bodies change our minds, like, even if we aren't feeling super confident before a job interview, can we do Wonder Woman pose for two minutes like in the bathroom stall, and go in and perform better than if we didn't? Or if we did, you know if we're just like kind of looking at our phone and stressing on the bench before you call them. So it isn't until about minute 16 where she starts to tell a personal story. It's always interesting, I think when people were people choose to share a personal story in a TED talk, it's often for me usually ends up being at the beginning as a hook. And then it's circled back to at the end, or like this is kind of saved until the very last minute to really drive home the point in a really a more emotional way. So she shares that minute 16 That she was in an extremely intense car accident at age 19. She woke up at a head injury rehab center. Her i Q had decreased by two standard deviations. And she was essentially told to leave college she was like unenrolled, she went to CU Boulder, which I'm only discovering from her Instagram being a deadhead. They were just there. And that was a big deal for her because she had always resonated with being smart that was associated with her identity. So when she went to grad school, when she finally finished college, I think she said it took her three or four more years than her peers. But when she finally went to grad school, and she had a swan called a mentor, or sponsor person, and was essentially told to fake it till she made it because she wanted to quit immediately. She had huge impostor syndrome, as you would as we all do, of course, but and she eventually became a teacher. After her first year of teaching, another student came in, at the almost the end of the semester after not participating in class. And again, participation is a huge part of the grade as we know, and said the same thing was said that she thought she didn't belong there. She was an impostor. And she's probably going to fail the class. And Amy Cuddy was like, Absolutely not. She gets emotional at this point. It's like almost tearing up a little bit choking up. And it's a powerful moment, right, because she's like, this is full circle, this is what I experienced. And now I get to share the same advice I was given that was that ended up working for me where it was that I went through the motions, I fake fake it till I made it. And she says, the quote that I played at the beginning, which is fake it till you become it. And she puts that up on the slides, too. These her only slides are really these pictures of the animals, the celebrities and of these few pieces of text where it's either her study, or this quote that says fake it till you become it. And then she says tiny tweaks to big changes, right. So two minutes in the bathroom stall before an interview. Two minutes like at your desk every day before you start the day. All you need is two minutes privacy and the power to know as she says, this is such a powerful tool for people with no resources to because all you need is time alone for two minutes to make sure that you get the time to get yourself in a power pose and have it into be integrated into your life. However it might be right so it's I think it's a really cool I've heard about Power Poses. I've definitely done one before an interview, I must admit, I wish Mikey was here to ask. So have you guys done one? I don't know. I think did it help me? I do remember getting a job offer with one that I had done. Now. Did that happen every time of course that's like, you know, the odds are not always in your favor for an interview. But I also you know, between the power pose and listening to the Lizzo Tiny Desk concert, I remember being very confident going into this job interview being like I got this, like they should be lucky to hire me. And yeah, I did get a job offer about from that one. I remember. So, you know, I think it's worth trying. I mean, the worst case scenario, you feel silly for two minutes by yourself and then let this psychologies just work for itself. We're animals, okay. And even though we're like, I don't know, the only animals in the animal kingdom that have to pay taxes and get jobs and stuff. I mean, let's use this to our advantage. Let's use the power dynamic and the testosterone to the cortisol levels. Let's leverage them as much as we can control them as much as we can, so that we can deliver our best work, you know, so if you're a speaker, this is absolutely something to try out. Maybe you already do this. I would love to hear more about like not verbal communication but this was such a good TED Talk. If you're looking for something to kind of go get inspired, like a new fresh perspective, how to get confident, maybe work with a lot of people that are speakers that feel uncomfortable going on stage, you know, have them watch the setup. I think it's a really helpful thing. It's not it's from 2012, but I think it's so it's not outdated at all. It's she does such a good job. I'm excited to add Amy's most recent books about especially speaking to audiences Hello, audience first messaging, and can I get your teen power posing? I think it's silly and fun and a great icebreaker. So that's today's TED Talk and Amy Cuddy, your body language may shape who you are, like, you know, fake it till you become it. That's her jam. If I had to open the spice cabinet and obviously plug 80s books and that kind of thing. She's been pretty active on Instagram. She's on podcasts frequently. She's got a great link tree with like writing tips from great authors, her quarantine writing our some articles and opinion pieces and then recent podcast interviews. So now I'm like, Okay, I'm about to slide into her DMs and ask if she wants to come join us and chat more. So I'd have to say Yeah, her walkout song. I'm gonna pick my favorite Grateful Dead until we can get her on the podcast and ask ourselves, but we'll go with Alfia playing the Grateful Dead for me as well. I've got some Amy Cuddy TED Talk and thanks for joining everyone. Keep on pitching