Sit Up, Speak Up

Image by Ubi Desperare Nescio via Flickr

Want to feel more confident in what you’re saying or writing? Sit up straight. That’s the conclusion of a new study (abstract) out of Ohio State University.

Here’s the study, from Science Daily:

The study included 71 students at Ohio State. When they entered the lab for the experiment, the participants were told they would be taking part in two separate studies at the same time, one organized by the business school and one by the arts school.

They were told the arts study was examining factors contributing to people’s acting abilities, in this case, the ability to maintain a specific posture while engaging in other activities. They were seated at a computer terminal and instructed to either “sit up straight” and “push out [their] chest]” or “sit slouched forward” with their “face looking at [their] knees.”

While in one of these positions, students participated in the business study, which supposedly investigated factors contributing to job satisfaction and professional performance.

While holding their posture, students listed either three positive or three negative personal traits relating to future professional performance on the job.

After completing this task, the students took a survey in which they rated themselves on how well they would do as a future professional employee.

The results were striking.

How the students rated themselves as future professionals depended on which posture they held as they wrote the positive or negative traits.

Students who held the upright, confident posture were much more likely to rate themselves in line with the positive or negative traits they wrote down.

Got that? It wasn’t that writing positive things about yourself made you feel positive, or that writing negative things about yourself made you feel negative. Instead, you were more likely to believe whatever you wrote (whether it was positive or negative) if you were sitting up straight.

This study follows up on previous research showing that people believe more strongly in things they say while nodding their head up and down than things they say while shaking their head side to side.

Just another example of how our brains tie physical concepts to mental concepts — such as the heaviness of an object to the concept of importance or weightiness. And also an example of embodied attitudes, where our physical actions (like smiling) can affect our internal state (like being happy). We are, indeed, complicated and strange creatures.

Lesson: You probably want to take a test or fill out a job application sitting up straight. And you probably don’t want to shake your head from side to side when doing the same things.

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