Anyone about to go to a job interview usually can’t make
it out of the house without someone giving them some kind of
advice:
"Make eye contact," "Smile," "Show enthusiasm," "Ask questions,"
"Bring your resume," "Dress like you work there..."
The list goes on an on.
But a piece of important advice may be one job-seekers
haven’t heard since they were sitting at the dinner table
with Mom: "Sit up straight!"
According to new research from the Kellogg School of Management at
Northwestern
University, a person’s posture may also be a deciding
factor for whether they land a coveted job position -- even when
the person on the other side of the desk is in a more powerful
role.
More importantly, these new findings demonstrate that posture may be more significant to a person’s psychological manifestations of power than their title or rank alone.
Led by Kellogg School of Management professor Adam Galinsky and Kellogg PhD candidate Li Huang, along with Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Deborah Gruenfeld and Stanford PhD candidate Lucia Guillory, this research is the first to directly compare the effect on behavior of having a high-power role versus being in a high-power posture.
More powerful
Although not anticipated by the researchers, they consistently
found across three studies that posture mattered more than
hierarchical role -- it had a strong effect in making a person
think and act in a more powerful way.
In an interview situation, for example, an interviewee’s
posture will not only convey confidence and leadership but the
person will actually think and act more powerfully.
“Going into the research we figured role would make a big
difference, but shockingly the effect of posture dominated the
effect of role in each and every study,” said Huang.
Adam Galinsky, the Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and
Decisions in Management, points to the December 5, 2010 cover of
the New
Yorker as a classic example of how indicative posture can be in
determining whether people act as though they are in charge.
“The image depicts the power relationships between former
President George W. Bush -- shown with an apron, feather duster,
and a slouched, constricted posture -- while former Vice President
Dick Cheney has both arms expansively extended across the back of a
sofa, his legs sprawled across a coffee table. When hierarchical
role and physical posture diverge like this, posture seems to be
more important in determining how people act and
think.”
To test their theory, Galinsky, Huang and co-authors conducted
three experiments to explore the effects of body posture versus
role on power-related behaviors.
The first two experiments demonstrated that when individuals were
placed in high- or low-power roles while adopting expansive (i.e.
open) or constricted (i.e. closed) body postures, only posture
activated power-related behaviors.
In the expansive posture condition, participants were asked to
place one arm on the armrest of a chair and the other arm on the
back of a nearby chair; they were also told to cross their legs so
the ankle of one leg rested on the thigh of the other leg and
stretched beyond the leg of the chair.
In the constricted posture condition, participants were asked to
place their hands under their thighs, drop their shoulders and
place their legs together.
During various tasks such as a word completion exercise and a
blackjack game, participants with open body postures were thinking
about more power-related words and generally took more action than
those with closed body postures.
Although people in a high-power role reported feeling more powerful
than did those in a low-power role, the manipulation of role power
had little effect on action.
These findings demonstrate that role and posture independently
affect participants’ sense of power, but posture is more
responsible for activating power-related behaviors.
In a third experiment, the researchers demonstrated posture also
has a greater effect on action than recalling an experience of
being in a high- or low-power role.
Participants verbally recorded a time when they were in a high- or
low-powered position while adopting either expansive or constricted
body postures, and were then asked whether they would take action
in three different scenarios.
Participants in the expansive body posture condition took action
more often than those with constricted postures, regardless of
whether they recalled a time of being in a high- or low-powered
role.
According to Galinsky, the role of powerful postures is important
for those seeking new jobs in 2011.
“With 1.9 million new jobs on the horizon this year, our
research suggests that your posture may be quite literally the way
to put your best foot forward in a job interview,” said
Galinsky.
The paper is titled “Powerful Postures Versus Powerful Roles:
Which Is the Proximate Correlate of Thought and Behavior?”
and appears in the January 2011 issue of Psychological Science.
