In the video Amy explains the experiment she made to find out if when you pretend to act powerful will you actually feel powerful. They already know that when you feel powerful you have a high level of the hormone testosterone and a low level of the hormone cortisol. Same thing with feeling powerless, just the opposite. Instead of having high testosterone and low cortisol, you would have low testosterone and high cortisol.
In the experiment people came in and spit into a vial and then they were told that for two minutes to either do this or that ( referring to different power and non power poses). They're not allowed to look at pictures of the poses because it could affect the results with giving them the concept of power. And instead they want them to be feeling power. They then asked them how powerful did they feel on a series of items and then they gave them an opportunity to gamble and then they took another saliva test and that's the whole experiment. The gambling part was put in there because studies show that when you're confident and feel powerful you're most likely to gamble.
So the results from the saliva test showed that with high power poses people had a 20% increase in testosterone from where they started and a 25% decrease in the level of cortisol. And in low power poses there was a 10% decrease in testosterone levels and a 15% increase in cortisol. So what does this mean? These two minutes can lead to these hormonal changes that can change your brain to either be assertive, confident and comfortable or really stress reactive and feeling sort of shut down. We found out that our non verbals do govern how we think and feel about ourselves, also, our bodies change our minds.
But how can we use this in real life situations? Amy Cuddy wondered the same thing which is why they did another test. But this time, people would come in and pick their poses and then they would go through a very stressful job interview. This job interview would not be easy either, it would be five minutes long, recorded, would be judged, and also the judges can give no nonverbal feedback. This means you would pretty much be staring at a blank face the entire time. For example....
In the experiment people came in and spit into a vial and then they were told that for two minutes to either do this or that ( referring to different power and non power poses). They're not allowed to look at pictures of the poses because it could affect the results with giving them the concept of power. And instead they want them to be feeling power. They then asked them how powerful did they feel on a series of items and then they gave them an opportunity to gamble and then they took another saliva test and that's the whole experiment. The gambling part was put in there because studies show that when you're confident and feel powerful you're most likely to gamble.
So the results from the saliva test showed that with high power poses people had a 20% increase in testosterone from where they started and a 25% decrease in the level of cortisol. And in low power poses there was a 10% decrease in testosterone levels and a 15% increase in cortisol. So what does this mean? These two minutes can lead to these hormonal changes that can change your brain to either be assertive, confident and comfortable or really stress reactive and feeling sort of shut down. We found out that our non verbals do govern how we think and feel about ourselves, also, our bodies change our minds.
But how can we use this in real life situations? Amy Cuddy wondered the same thing which is why they did another test. But this time, people would come in and pick their poses and then they would go through a very stressful job interview. This job interview would not be easy either, it would be five minutes long, recorded, would be judged, and also the judges can give no nonverbal feedback. This means you would pretty much be staring at a blank face the entire time. For example....
Wouldn't it be really difficult, staring at someone and not being able to tell what there thinking or feeling? And after this, without knowing who did what poses the judges picked who they wanted to "hire" and they ended up picking all the high power poses.
I learned from the video that by taking two minutes to change your body into a high power pose, it will really affect the outcome of how you perform on something. Even though I learned from it, it didn't really change the way I think about things. And I only say this because, before I watched the video I had already thought that if you stay positive about something most likely you'll do good at that thing. Amy just made me think about it from a different angle, that instead of thinking it make your body positive. So with this, I can take what I learned and apply them to do well on tests, job interviews or other important things.
I learned from the video that by taking two minutes to change your body into a high power pose, it will really affect the outcome of how you perform on something. Even though I learned from it, it didn't really change the way I think about things. And I only say this because, before I watched the video I had already thought that if you stay positive about something most likely you'll do good at that thing. Amy just made me think about it from a different angle, that instead of thinking it make your body positive. So with this, I can take what I learned and apply them to do well on tests, job interviews or other important things.