WEBVTT 00:00:00.707 --> 00:00:03.505 So I want to start by offering you a free 00:00:03.505 --> 00:00:06.129 no-tech life hack, 00:00:06.129 --> 00:00:08.750 and all it requires of you is this: 00:00:08.750 --> 00:00:12.937 that you change your posture for two minutes. 00:00:12.937 --> 00:00:16.361 But before I give it away, I want to ask you to right now 00:00:16.361 --> 00:00:19.954 do a little audit of your body and what you're doing with your body. 00:00:19.954 --> 00:00:22.369 So how many of you are sort of making yourselves smaller? 00:00:22.369 --> 00:00:25.090 Maybe you're hunching, crossing your legs, 00:00:25.090 --> 00:00:26.014 maybe wrapping your ankles. 00:00:26.014 --> 00:00:29.753 Sometimes we hold onto our arms like this. 00:00:29.753 --> 00:00:33.424 Sometimes we spread out. (Laughter) 00:00:33.424 --> 00:00:35.696 I see you. (Laughter) 00:00:35.696 --> 00:00:38.211 So I want you to pay attention to what you're doing right now. 00:00:38.211 --> 00:00:40.425 We're going to come back to that in a few minutes, 00:00:40.425 --> 00:00:43.817 and I'm hoping that if you learn to tweak this a little bit, 00:00:43.817 --> 00:00:47.453 it could significantly change the way your life unfolds. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:47.453 --> 00:00:51.977 So, we're really fascinated with body language, 00:00:51.977 --> 00:00:53.936 and we're particularly interested 00:00:53.936 --> 00:00:55.900 in other people's body language. 00:00:55.900 --> 00:01:00.121 You know, we're interested in, like, you know — (Laughter) — 00:01:00.121 --> 00:01:04.519 an awkward interaction, or a smile, 00:01:04.519 --> 00:01:08.751 or a contemptuous glance, or maybe a very awkward wink, 00:01:08.751 --> 00:01:11.989 or maybe even something like a handshake. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:11.989 --> 00:01:14.667 Narrator: Here they are arriving at Number 10, and look at this 00:01:14.667 --> 00:01:17.343 lucky policeman gets to shake hands with the President 00:01:17.343 --> 00:01:19.831 of the United States. Oh, and here comes 00:01:19.831 --> 00:01:24.758 the Prime Minister of the — ? No. (Laughter) (Applause) 00:01:24.758 --> 00:01:26.846 (Laughter) (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:26.846 --> 00:01:31.140 Amy Cuddy: So a handshake, or the lack of a handshake, 00:01:31.140 --> 00:01:33.664 can have us talking for weeks and weeks and weeks. 00:01:33.664 --> 00:01:35.804 Even the BBC and The New York Times. 00:01:35.804 --> 00:01:39.755 So obviously when we think about nonverbal behavior, 00:01:39.755 --> 00:01:43.143 or body language -- but we call it nonverbals as social scientists -- 00:01:43.143 --> 00:01:46.023 it's language, so we think about communication. 00:01:46.023 --> 00:01:48.450 When we think about communication, we think about interactions. 00:01:48.450 --> 00:01:51.289 So what is your body language communicating to me? 00:01:51.289 --> 00:01:53.555 What's mine communicating to you? NOTE Paragraph 00:01:53.555 --> 00:01:57.773 And there's a lot of reason to believe that this is a valid 00:01:57.773 --> 00:02:00.308 way to look at this. So social scientists have spent a lot 00:02:00.308 --> 00:02:03.700 of time looking at the effects of our body language, 00:02:03.700 --> 00:02:06.209 or other people's body language, on judgments. 00:02:06.209 --> 00:02:09.648 And we make sweeping judgments and inferences from body language. 00:02:09.648 --> 00:02:13.638 And those judgments can predict really meaningful life outcomes 00:02:13.638 --> 00:02:17.431 like who we hire or promote, who we ask out on a date. 00:02:17.431 --> 00:02:22.116 For example, Nalini Ambady, a researcher at Tufts University, 00:02:22.116 --> 00:02:26.588 shows that when people watch 30-second soundless clips 00:02:26.588 --> 00:02:29.612 of real physician-patient interactions, 00:02:29.612 --> 00:02:32.445 their judgments of the physician's niceness 00:02:32.445 --> 00:02:35.082 predict whether or not that physician will be sued. 00:02:35.082 --> 00:02:37.276 So it doesn't have to do so much with whether or not 00:02:37.276 --> 00:02:39.421 that physician was incompetent, but do we like that person 00:02:39.421 --> 00:02:42.117 and how they interacted? 00:02:42.117 --> 00:02:45.052 Even more dramatic, Alex Todorov at Princeton has shown 00:02:45.052 --> 00:02:48.729 us that judgments of political candidates' faces 00:02:48.729 --> 00:02:53.316 in just one second predict 70 percent of U.S. Senate 00:02:53.316 --> 00:02:56.547 and gubernatorial race outcomes, 00:02:56.547 --> 00:02:58.769 and even, let's go digital, 00:02:58.769 --> 00:03:02.914 emoticons used well in online negotiations 00:03:02.914 --> 00:03:05.746 can lead to you claim more value from that negotiation. 00:03:05.746 --> 00:03:08.969 If you use them poorly, bad idea. Right? 00:03:08.969 --> 00:03:11.866 So when we think of nonverbals, we think of how we judge 00:03:11.866 --> 00:03:14.968 others, how they judge us and what the outcomes are. 00:03:14.968 --> 00:03:16.848 We tend to forget, though, the other audience 00:03:16.848 --> 00:03:20.523 that's influenced by our nonverbals, and that's ourselves. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:20.523 --> 00:03:23.736 We are also influenced by our nonverbals, our thoughts 00:03:23.736 --> 00:03:26.099 and our feelings and our physiology. 00:03:26.099 --> 00:03:29.162 So what nonverbals am I talking about? 00:03:29.162 --> 00:03:32.105 I'm a social psychologist. I study prejudice, 00:03:32.105 --> 00:03:34.832 and I teach at a competitive business school, 00:03:34.832 --> 00:03:39.316 so it was inevitable that I would become interested in power dynamics. 00:03:39.316 --> 00:03:43.128 I became especially interested in nonverbal expressions 00:03:43.128 --> 00:03:45.131 of power and dominance. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:45.131 --> 00:03:47.789 And what are nonverbal expressions of power and dominance? 00:03:47.789 --> 00:03:49.953 Well, this is what they are. 00:03:49.953 --> 00:03:52.831 So in the animal kingdom, they are about expanding. 00:03:52.831 --> 00:03:55.841 So you make yourself big, you stretch out, 00:03:55.841 --> 00:03:58.782 you take up space, you're basically opening up. 00:03:58.782 --> 00:04:01.772 It's about opening up. And this is true 00:04:01.772 --> 00:04:05.532 across the animal kingdom. It's not just limited to primates. 00:04:05.532 --> 00:04:08.952 And humans do the same thing. (Laughter) 00:04:08.952 --> 00:04:12.663 So they do this both when they have power sort of chronically, 00:04:12.663 --> 00:04:15.664 and also when they're feeling powerful in the moment. 00:04:15.664 --> 00:04:18.569 And this one is especially interesting because it really shows us 00:04:18.569 --> 00:04:22.758 how universal and old these expressions of power are. 00:04:22.758 --> 00:04:25.357 This expression, which is known as pride, 00:04:25.357 --> 00:04:28.405 Jessica Tracy has studied. She shows that 00:04:28.405 --> 00:04:30.517 people who are born with sight 00:04:30.517 --> 00:04:33.458 and people who are congenitally blind do this 00:04:33.458 --> 00:04:35.772 when they win at a physical competition. 00:04:35.772 --> 00:04:37.750 So when they cross the finish line and they've won, 00:04:37.750 --> 00:04:39.861 it doesn't matter if they've never seen anyone do it. 00:04:39.861 --> 00:04:40.947 They do this. 00:04:40.947 --> 00:04:44.390 So the arms up in the V, the chin is slightly lifted. 00:04:44.390 --> 00:04:46.934 What do we do when we feel powerless? We do exactly 00:04:46.934 --> 00:04:50.984 the opposite. We close up. We wrap ourselves up. 00:04:50.984 --> 00:04:54.448 We make ourselves small. We don't want to bump into the person next to us. 00:04:54.448 --> 00:04:57.489 So again, both animals and humans do the same thing. 00:04:57.489 --> 00:05:00.569 And this is what happens when you put together high 00:05:00.569 --> 00:05:02.880 and low power. So what we tend to do 00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:07.248 when it comes to power is that we complement the other's nonverbals. 00:05:07.248 --> 00:05:09.679 So if someone is being really powerful with us, 00:05:09.679 --> 00:05:11.904 we tend to make ourselves smaller. We don't mirror them. 00:05:11.904 --> 00:05:13.937 We do the opposite of them. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:13.937 --> 00:05:17.136 So I'm watching this behavior in the classroom, 00:05:17.136 --> 00:05:23.922 and what do I notice? I notice that MBA students 00:05:23.922 --> 00:05:26.926 really exhibit the full range of power nonverbals. 00:05:26.926 --> 00:05:29.394 So you have people who are like caricatures of alphas, 00:05:29.394 --> 00:05:32.384 really coming into the room, they get right into the middle of the room 00:05:32.384 --> 00:05:36.316 before class even starts, like they really want to occupy space. 00:05:36.316 --> 00:05:38.205 When they sit down, they're sort of spread out. 00:05:38.205 --> 00:05:40.337 They raise their hands like this. 00:05:40.337 --> 00:05:42.972 You have other people who are virtually collapsing 00:05:42.972 --> 00:05:45.296 when they come in. As soon they come in, you see it. 00:05:45.296 --> 00:05:47.834 You see it on their faces and their bodies, and they sit 00:05:47.834 --> 00:05:49.820 in their chair and they make themselves tiny, 00:05:49.820 --> 00:05:52.969 and they go like this when they raise their hand. 00:05:52.969 --> 00:05:54.646 I notice a couple of things about this. 00:05:54.646 --> 00:05:56.383 One, you're not going to be surprised. 00:05:56.383 --> 00:05:58.727 It seems to be related to gender. 00:05:58.727 --> 00:06:04.192 So women are much more likely to do this kind of thing than men. 00:06:04.192 --> 00:06:06.778 Women feel chronically less powerful than men, 00:06:06.778 --> 00:06:10.733 so this is not surprising. But the other thing I noticed is that 00:06:10.733 --> 00:06:13.578 it also seemed to be related to the extent to which 00:06:13.578 --> 00:06:17.259 the students were participating, and how well they were participating. 00:06:17.259 --> 00:06:19.841 And this is really important in the MBA classroom, 00:06:19.841 --> 00:06:22.522 because participation counts for half the grade. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:22.522 --> 00:06:26.995 So business schools have been struggling with this gender grade gap. 00:06:26.995 --> 00:06:30.267 You get these equally qualified women and men coming in 00:06:30.267 --> 00:06:32.263 and then you get these differences in grades, 00:06:32.263 --> 00:06:35.523 and it seems to be partly attributable to participation. 00:06:35.523 --> 00:06:38.546 So I started to wonder, you know, okay, 00:06:38.546 --> 00:06:41.070 so you have these people coming in like this, and they're 00:06:41.070 --> 00:06:44.741 participating. Is it possible that we could get people to fake it 00:06:44.741 --> 00:06:46.713 and would it lead them to participate more? NOTE Paragraph 00:06:46.713 --> 00:06:51.378 So my main collaborator Dana Carney, who's at Berkeley, 00:06:51.378 --> 00:06:54.933 and I really wanted to know, can you fake it till you make it? 00:06:54.933 --> 00:06:57.963 Like, can you do this just for a little while and actually 00:06:57.963 --> 00:07:01.786 experience a behavioral outcome that makes you seem more powerful? 00:07:01.786 --> 00:07:05.338 So we know that our nonverbals govern how other people 00:07:05.338 --> 00:07:07.031 think and feel about us. There's a lot of evidence. 00:07:07.031 --> 00:07:10.143 But our question really was, do our nonverbals 00:07:10.143 --> 00:07:13.253 govern how we think and feel about ourselves? NOTE Paragraph 00:07:13.253 --> 00:07:15.943 There's some evidence that they do. 00:07:15.943 --> 00:07:20.579 So, for example, we smile when we feel happy, 00:07:20.579 --> 00:07:22.757 but also, when we're forced to smile 00:07:22.757 --> 00:07:27.172 by holding a pen in our teeth like this, it makes us feel happy. 00:07:27.172 --> 00:07:30.253 So it goes both ways. When it comes to power, 00:07:30.253 --> 00:07:35.468 it also goes both ways. So when you feel powerful, 00:07:35.468 --> 00:07:38.854 you're more likely to do this, but it's also possible that 00:07:38.854 --> 00:07:44.460 when you pretend to be powerful, you are more likely 00:07:44.460 --> 00:07:46.888 to actually feel powerful. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:46.888 --> 00:07:49.948 So the second question really was, you know, 00:07:49.948 --> 00:07:52.531 so we know that our minds change our bodies, 00:07:52.531 --> 00:07:56.948 but is it also true that our bodies change our minds? 00:07:56.948 --> 00:07:59.675 And when I say minds, in the case of the powerful, 00:07:59.675 --> 00:08:01.047 what am I talking about? 00:08:01.047 --> 00:08:03.213 So I'm talking about thoughts and feelings 00:08:03.213 --> 00:08:06.668 and the sort of physiological things that make up our thoughts and feelings, 00:08:06.668 --> 00:08:09.876 and in my case, that's hormones. I look at hormones. 00:08:09.876 --> 00:08:12.979 So what do the minds of the powerful versus the powerless 00:08:12.979 --> 00:08:14.210 look like? 00:08:14.210 --> 00:08:18.506 So powerful people tend to be, not surprisingly, 00:08:18.506 --> 00:08:22.730 more assertive and more confident, more optimistic. 00:08:22.730 --> 00:08:25.729 They actually feel that they're going to win even at games of chance. 00:08:25.729 --> 00:08:29.908 They also tend to be able to think more abstractly. 00:08:29.908 --> 00:08:32.514 So there are a lot of differences. They take more risks. 00:08:32.514 --> 00:08:35.367 There are a lot of differences between powerful and powerless people. 00:08:35.367 --> 00:08:38.659 Physiologically, there also are differences on two 00:08:38.659 --> 00:08:42.724 key hormones: testosterone, which is the dominance hormone, 00:08:42.724 --> 00:08:46.387 and cortisol, which is the stress hormone. 00:08:46.387 --> 00:08:49.724 So what we find is that 00:08:49.724 --> 00:08:53.563 high-power alpha males in primate hierarchies 00:08:53.563 --> 00:08:56.761 have high testosterone and low cortisol, 00:08:56.761 --> 00:09:00.287 and powerful and effective leaders also have 00:09:00.287 --> 00:09:02.542 high testosterone and low cortisol. 00:09:02.542 --> 00:09:04.845 So what does that mean? When you think about power, 00:09:04.845 --> 00:09:07.270 people tended to think only about testosterone, 00:09:07.270 --> 00:09:09.058 because that was about dominance. 00:09:09.058 --> 00:09:12.528 But really, power is also about how you react to stress. 00:09:12.528 --> 00:09:15.657 So do you want the high-power leader that's dominant, 00:09:15.657 --> 00:09:18.399 high on testosterone, but really stress reactive? 00:09:18.399 --> 00:09:20.734 Probably not, right? You want the person 00:09:20.734 --> 00:09:23.018 who's powerful and assertive and dominant, 00:09:23.018 --> 00:09:26.706 but not very stress reactive, the person who's laid back. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:26.706 --> 00:09:32.938 So we know that in primate hierarchies, if an alpha 00:09:32.938 --> 00:09:36.629 needs to take over, if an individual needs to take over 00:09:36.629 --> 00:09:39.186 an alpha role sort of suddenly, 00:09:39.186 --> 00:09:42.297 within a few days, that individual's testosterone has gone up 00:09:42.297 --> 00:09:45.802 significantly and his cortisol has dropped significantly. 00:09:45.802 --> 00:09:48.843 So we have this evidence, both that the body can shape 00:09:48.843 --> 00:09:51.209 the mind, at least at the facial level, 00:09:51.209 --> 00:09:55.338 and also that role changes can shape the mind. 00:09:55.338 --> 00:09:58.120 So what happens, okay, you take a role change, 00:09:58.120 --> 00:10:00.704 what happens if you do that at a really minimal level, 00:10:00.704 --> 00:10:03.117 like this tiny manipulation, this tiny intervention? 00:10:03.117 --> 00:10:05.768 "For two minutes," you say, "I want you to stand like this, 00:10:05.768 --> 00:10:08.551 and it's going to make you feel more powerful." NOTE Paragraph 00:10:08.551 --> 00:10:13.026 So this is what we did. We decided to bring people 00:10:13.026 --> 00:10:17.239 into the lab and run a little experiment, and these people 00:10:17.239 --> 00:10:21.668 adopted, for two minutes, either high-power poses 00:10:21.668 --> 00:10:23.917 or low-power poses, and I'm just going to show you 00:10:23.917 --> 00:10:26.879 five of the poses, although they took on only two. 00:10:26.879 --> 00:10:29.359 So here's one. 00:10:29.359 --> 00:10:31.453 A couple more. 00:10:31.453 --> 00:10:34.271 This one has been dubbed the "Wonder Woman" 00:10:34.271 --> 00:10:36.646 by the media. 00:10:36.646 --> 00:10:37.968 Here are a couple more. 00:10:37.968 --> 00:10:40.322 So you can be standing or you can be sitting. 00:10:40.322 --> 00:10:42.307 And here are the low-power poses. 00:10:42.307 --> 00:10:46.370 So you're folding up, you're making yourself small. 00:10:46.370 --> 00:10:48.109 This one is very low-power. 00:10:48.109 --> 00:10:49.466 When you're touching your neck, 00:10:49.466 --> 00:10:52.092 you're really protecting yourself. 00:10:52.092 --> 00:10:54.677 So this is what happens. They come in, 00:10:54.677 --> 00:10:56.437 they spit into a vial, 00:10:56.437 --> 00:10:59.610 we for two minutes say, "You need to do this or this." 00:10:59.610 --> 00:11:01.403 They don't look at pictures of the poses. We don't want to prime them 00:11:01.403 --> 00:11:04.783 with a concept of power. We want them to be feeling power, 00:11:04.783 --> 00:11:06.842 right? So two minutes they do this. 00:11:06.842 --> 00:11:10.051 We then ask them, "How powerful do you feel?" on a series of items, 00:11:10.051 --> 00:11:12.818 and then we give them an opportunity to gamble, 00:11:12.818 --> 00:11:15.583 and then we take another saliva sample. 00:11:15.583 --> 00:11:17.148 That's it. That's the whole experiment. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:17.148 --> 00:11:20.854 So this is what we find. Risk tolerance, which is the gambling, 00:11:20.854 --> 00:11:23.752 what we find is that when you're in the high-power 00:11:23.752 --> 00:11:27.250 pose condition, 86 percent of you will gamble. 00:11:27.250 --> 00:11:29.195 When you're in the low-power pose condition, 00:11:29.195 --> 00:11:33.370 only 60 percent, and that's a pretty whopping significant difference. 00:11:33.370 --> 00:11:35.850 Here's what we find on testosterone. 00:11:35.850 --> 00:11:39.355 From their baseline when they come in, high-power people 00:11:39.355 --> 00:11:41.717 experience about a 20-percent increase, 00:11:41.717 --> 00:11:46.338 and low-power people experience about a 10-percent decrease. 00:11:46.338 --> 00:11:49.155 So again, two minutes, and you get these changes. 00:11:49.155 --> 00:11:51.907 Here's what you get on cortisol. High-power people 00:11:51.907 --> 00:11:54.954 experience about a 25-percent decrease, and 00:11:54.954 --> 00:11:59.086 the low-power people experience about a 15-percent increase. 00:11:59.086 --> 00:12:01.818 So two minutes lead to these hormonal changes 00:12:01.818 --> 00:12:04.835 that configure your brain to basically be either 00:12:04.835 --> 00:12:07.763 assertive, confident and comfortable, 00:12:07.763 --> 00:12:11.771 or really stress-reactive, and, you know, feeling 00:12:11.771 --> 00:12:15.627 sort of shut down. And we've all had the feeling, right? 00:12:15.627 --> 00:12:18.514 So it seems that our nonverbals do govern 00:12:18.514 --> 00:12:20.835 how we think and feel about ourselves, 00:12:20.835 --> 00:12:23.291 so it's not just others, but it's also ourselves. 00:12:23.291 --> 00:12:25.718 Also, our bodies change our minds. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:25.718 --> 00:12:28.124 But the next question, of course, is 00:12:28.124 --> 00:12:29.638 can power posing for a few minutes 00:12:29.638 --> 00:12:31.929 really change your life in meaningful ways? 00:12:31.929 --> 00:12:34.575 So this is in the lab. It's this little task, you know, 00:12:34.575 --> 00:12:37.171 it's just a couple of minutes. Where can you actually 00:12:37.171 --> 00:12:39.946 apply this? Which we cared about, of course. 00:12:39.946 --> 00:12:44.123 And so we think it's really, what matters, I mean, 00:12:44.123 --> 00:12:46.711 where you want to use this is evaluative situations 00:12:46.711 --> 00:12:50.164 like social threat situations. Where are you being evaluated, 00:12:50.164 --> 00:12:53.848 either by your friends? Like for teenagers it's at the lunchroom table. 00:12:53.848 --> 00:12:56.053 It could be, you know, for some people it's speaking 00:12:56.053 --> 00:12:59.077 at a school board meeting. It might be giving a pitch 00:12:59.077 --> 00:13:01.934 or giving a talk like this 00:13:01.934 --> 00:13:04.732 or doing a job interview. 00:13:04.732 --> 00:13:07.224 We decided that the one that most people could relate to 00:13:07.224 --> 00:13:08.461 because most people had been through 00:13:08.461 --> 00:13:09.843 was the job interview. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:09.843 --> 00:13:13.796 So we published these findings, and the media 00:13:13.796 --> 00:13:16.390 are all over it, and they say, Okay, so this is what you do 00:13:16.390 --> 00:13:19.590 when you go in for the job interview, right? (Laughter) 00:13:19.590 --> 00:13:21.981 You know, so we were of course horrified, and said, 00:13:21.981 --> 00:13:24.166 Oh my God, no, no, no, that's not what we meant at all. 00:13:24.166 --> 00:13:26.941 For numerous reasons, no, no, no, don't do that. 00:13:26.941 --> 00:13:29.532 Again, this is not about you talking to other people. 00:13:29.532 --> 00:13:31.391 It's you talking to yourself. What do you do 00:13:31.391 --> 00:13:34.200 before you go into a job interview? You do this. 00:13:34.200 --> 00:13:36.466 Right? You're sitting down. You're looking at your iPhone -- 00:13:36.466 --> 00:13:38.752 or your Android, not trying to leave anyone out. 00:13:38.752 --> 00:13:40.946 You are, you know, you're looking at your notes, 00:13:40.946 --> 00:13:42.776 you're hunching up, making yourself small, 00:13:42.776 --> 00:13:45.068 when really what you should be doing maybe is this, 00:13:45.068 --> 00:13:48.484 like, in the bathroom, right? Do that. Find two minutes. 00:13:48.484 --> 00:13:49.904 So that's what we want to test. Okay? 00:13:49.904 --> 00:13:52.088 So we bring people into a lab, and 00:13:52.088 --> 00:13:55.465 they do either high- or low-power poses again, 00:13:55.465 --> 00:13:58.097 they go through a very stressful job interview. 00:13:58.097 --> 00:14:01.713 It's five minutes long. They are being recorded. 00:14:01.713 --> 00:14:04.224 They're being judged also, and the judges 00:14:04.224 --> 00:14:08.199 are trained to give no nonverbal feedback, 00:14:08.199 --> 00:14:09.806 so they look like this. Like, imagine 00:14:09.806 --> 00:14:12.090 this is the person interviewing you. 00:14:12.090 --> 00:14:16.713 So for five minutes, nothing, and this is worse than being heckled. 00:14:16.713 --> 00:14:20.026 People hate this. It's what Marianne LaFrance calls 00:14:20.026 --> 00:14:22.117 "standing in social quicksand." 00:14:22.117 --> 00:14:23.926 So this really spikes your cortisol. 00:14:23.926 --> 00:14:25.628 So this is the job interview we put them through, 00:14:25.628 --> 00:14:28.457 because we really wanted to see what happened. 00:14:28.457 --> 00:14:31.564 We then have these coders look at these tapes, four of them. 00:14:31.564 --> 00:14:34.736 They're blind to the hypothesis. They're blind to the conditions. 00:14:34.736 --> 00:14:37.521 They have no idea who's been posing in what pose, 00:14:37.521 --> 00:14:42.611 and they end up looking at these sets of tapes, 00:14:42.611 --> 00:14:44.683 and they say, "Oh, we want to hire these people," -- 00:14:44.683 --> 00:14:48.105 all the high-power posers -- "we don't want to hire these people. 00:14:48.105 --> 00:14:50.890 We also evaluate these people much more positively overall." 00:14:50.890 --> 00:14:55.626 But what's driving it? It's not about the content of the speech. 00:14:55.626 --> 00:14:58.502 It's about the presence that they're bringing to the speech. 00:14:58.502 --> 00:15:00.551 We also, because we rate them on all these variables 00:15:00.551 --> 00:15:03.642 related to competence, like, how well-structured 00:15:03.642 --> 00:15:06.418 is the speech? How good is it? What are their qualifications? 00:15:06.418 --> 00:15:09.474 No effect on those things. This is what's affected. 00:15:09.474 --> 00:15:12.753 These kinds of things. People are bringing their true selves, 00:15:12.753 --> 00:15:14.626 basically. They're bringing themselves. 00:15:14.626 --> 00:15:16.849 They bring their ideas, but as themselves, 00:15:16.849 --> 00:15:19.385 with no, you know, residue over them. 00:15:19.385 --> 00:15:24.316 So this is what's driving the effect, or mediating the effect. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:24.316 --> 00:15:27.684 So when I tell people about this, 00:15:27.684 --> 00:15:30.563 that our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behavior, 00:15:30.563 --> 00:15:33.539 and our behavior can change our outcomes, they say to me, 00:15:33.539 --> 00:15:35.406 "I don't -- It feels fake." Right? 00:15:35.406 --> 00:15:39.185 So I said, fake it till you make it. I don't -- It's not me. 00:15:39.185 --> 00:15:42.360 I don't want to get there and then still feel like a fraud. 00:15:42.360 --> 00:15:43.879 I don't want to feel like an impostor. 00:15:43.879 --> 00:15:48.291 I don't want to get there only to feel like I'm not supposed to be here. 00:15:48.291 --> 00:15:50.478 And that really resonated with me, 00:15:50.478 --> 00:15:52.536 because I want to tell you a little story about 00:15:52.536 --> 00:15:55.946 being an impostor and feeling like I'm not supposed to be here. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:55.946 --> 00:15:58.887 When I was 19, I was in a really bad car accident. 00:15:58.887 --> 00:16:02.292 I was thrown out of a car, rolled several times. 00:16:02.292 --> 00:16:05.803 I was thrown from the car. And I woke up in a head injury 00:16:05.803 --> 00:16:09.395 rehab ward, and I had been withdrawn from college, 00:16:09.395 --> 00:16:15.107 and I learned that my I.Q. had dropped by two standard deviations, 00:16:15.107 --> 00:16:17.695 which was very traumatic. 00:16:17.695 --> 00:16:20.566 I knew my I.Q. because I had identified with being smart, 00:16:20.566 --> 00:16:22.578 and I had been called gifted as a child. 00:16:22.578 --> 00:16:25.778 So I'm taken out of college, I keep trying to go back. 00:16:25.778 --> 00:16:27.502 They say, "You're not going to finish college. 00:16:27.502 --> 00:16:30.379 Just, you know, there are other things for you to do, 00:16:30.379 --> 00:16:32.277 but that's not going to work out for you." 00:16:32.277 --> 00:16:36.161 So I really struggled with this, and I have to say, 00:16:36.161 --> 00:16:38.935 having your identity taken from you, your core identity, 00:16:38.935 --> 00:16:40.794 and for me it was being smart, 00:16:40.794 --> 00:16:45.203 having that taken from you, there's nothing that leaves you feeling more powerless than that. 00:16:45.203 --> 00:16:47.805 So I felt entirely powerless. I worked and worked and worked, 00:16:47.805 --> 00:16:50.939 and I got lucky, and worked, and got lucky, and worked. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:50.939 --> 00:16:53.391 Eventually I graduated from college. 00:16:53.391 --> 00:16:55.198 It took me four years longer than my peers, 00:16:55.198 --> 00:16:59.756 and I convinced someone, my angel advisor, Susan Fiske, 00:16:59.756 --> 00:17:02.700 to take me on, and so I ended up at Princeton, 00:17:02.700 --> 00:17:05.551 and I was like, I am not supposed to be here. 00:17:05.551 --> 00:17:06.845 I am an impostor. 00:17:06.845 --> 00:17:08.426 And the night before my first-year talk, 00:17:08.426 --> 00:17:11.064 and the first-year talk at Princeton is a 20-minute talk 00:17:11.064 --> 00:17:13.099 to 20 people. That's it. 00:17:13.099 --> 00:17:15.986 I was so afraid of being found out the next day 00:17:15.986 --> 00:17:18.799 that I called her and said, "I'm quitting." 00:17:18.799 --> 00:17:20.655 She was like, "You are not quitting, 00:17:20.655 --> 00:17:23.213 because I took a gamble on you, and you're staying. 00:17:23.213 --> 00:17:25.404 You're going to stay, and this is what you're going to do. 00:17:25.404 --> 00:17:26.761 You are going to fake it. 00:17:26.761 --> 00:17:30.541 You're going to do every talk that you ever get asked to do. 00:17:30.541 --> 00:17:32.280 You're just going to do it and do it and do it, 00:17:32.280 --> 00:17:35.249 even if you're terrified and just paralyzed 00:17:35.249 --> 00:17:37.827 and having an out-of-body experience, until you have 00:17:37.827 --> 00:17:40.992 this moment where you say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm doing it. 00:17:40.992 --> 00:17:43.958 Like, I have become this. I am actually doing this.'" 00:17:43.958 --> 00:17:46.368 So that's what I did. Five years in grad school, 00:17:46.368 --> 00:17:48.109 a few years, you know, I'm at Northwestern, 00:17:48.109 --> 00:17:50.696 I moved to Harvard, I'm at Harvard, I'm not really 00:17:50.696 --> 00:17:54.196 thinking about it anymore, but for a long time I had been thinking, 00:17:54.196 --> 00:17:56.500 "Not supposed to be here. Not supposed to be here." NOTE Paragraph 00:17:56.500 --> 00:17:58.978 So at the end of my first year at Harvard, 00:17:58.978 --> 00:18:03.544 a student who had not talked in class the entire semester, 00:18:03.544 --> 00:18:06.751 who I had said, "Look, you've gotta participate or else you're going to fail," 00:18:06.751 --> 00:18:09.253 came into my office. I really didn't know her at all. 00:18:09.253 --> 00:18:13.235 And she said, she came in totally defeated, and she said, 00:18:13.235 --> 00:18:19.280 "I'm not supposed to be here." 00:18:19.280 --> 00:18:23.408 And that was the moment for me. Because two things happened. 00:18:23.408 --> 00:18:24.902 One was that I realized, 00:18:24.902 --> 00:18:28.136 oh my gosh, I don't feel like that anymore. You know. 00:18:28.136 --> 00:18:30.818 I don't feel that anymore, but she does, and I get that feeling. 00:18:30.818 --> 00:18:33.455 And the second was, she is supposed to be here! 00:18:33.455 --> 00:18:35.259 Like, she can fake it, she can become it. 00:18:35.259 --> 00:18:38.999 So I was like, "Yes, you are! You are supposed to be here! 00:18:38.999 --> 00:18:40.434 And tomorrow you're going to fake it, 00:18:40.434 --> 00:18:43.498 you're going to make yourself powerful, and, you know, 00:18:43.498 --> 00:18:46.521 you're gonna — " (Applause) 00:18:46.521 --> 00:18:48.560 (Applause) 00:18:48.560 --> 00:18:52.993 "And you're going to go into the classroom, 00:18:52.993 --> 00:18:55.417 and you are going to give the best comment ever." 00:18:55.417 --> 00:18:58.422 You know? And she gave the best comment ever, 00:18:58.422 --> 00:18:59.285 and people turned around and they were like, 00:18:59.285 --> 00:19:02.729 oh my God, I didn't even notice her sitting there, you know? (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:19:02.729 --> 00:19:05.600 She comes back to me months later, and I realized 00:19:05.600 --> 00:19:07.884 that she had not just faked it till she made it, 00:19:07.884 --> 00:19:10.608 she had actually faked it till she became it. 00:19:10.608 --> 00:19:12.431 So she had changed. 00:19:12.431 --> 00:19:16.515 And so I want to say to you, don't fake it till you make it. 00:19:16.515 --> 00:19:19.312 Fake it till you become it. You know? It's not — 00:19:19.312 --> 00:19:22.953 Do it enough until you actually become it and internalize. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:22.953 --> 00:19:25.608 The last thing I'm going to leave you with is this. 00:19:25.608 --> 00:19:30.080 Tiny tweaks can lead to big changes. 00:19:30.080 --> 00:19:32.577 So this is two minutes. 00:19:32.577 --> 00:19:34.313 Two minutes, two minutes, two minutes. 00:19:34.313 --> 00:19:37.559 Before you go into the next stressful evaluative situation, 00:19:37.559 --> 00:19:40.265 for two minutes, try doing this, in the elevator, 00:19:40.265 --> 00:19:43.504 in a bathroom stall, at your desk behind closed doors. 00:19:43.504 --> 00:19:45.944 That's what you want to do. Configure your brain 00:19:45.944 --> 00:19:47.766 to cope the best in that situation. 00:19:47.766 --> 00:19:50.731 Get your testosterone up. Get your cortisol down. 00:19:50.731 --> 00:19:54.697 Don't leave that situation feeling like, oh, I didn't show them who I am. 00:19:54.697 --> 00:19:57.049 Leave that situation feeling like, oh, I really feel like 00:19:57.049 --> 00:19:58.885 I got to say who I am and show who I am. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:58.885 --> 00:20:01.427 So I want to ask you first, you know, 00:20:01.427 --> 00:20:05.208 both to try power posing, 00:20:05.208 --> 00:20:07.094 and also I want to ask you 00:20:07.094 --> 00:20:10.322 to share the science, because this is simple. 00:20:10.322 --> 00:20:12.199 I don't have ego involved in this. (Laughter) 00:20:12.199 --> 00:20:14.086 Give it away. Share it with people, 00:20:14.086 --> 00:20:15.947 because the people who can use it the most are the ones 00:20:15.947 --> 00:20:20.105 with no resources and no technology 00:20:20.105 --> 00:20:23.231 and no status and no power. Give it to them 00:20:23.231 --> 00:20:24.514 because they can do it in private. 00:20:24.514 --> 00:20:27.343 They need their bodies, privacy and two minutes, 00:20:27.343 --> 00:20:30.493 and it can significantly change the outcomes of their life. 00:20:30.493 --> 00:20:34.679 Thank you. (Applause) 00:20:34.679 --> 00:20:41.569 (Applause)