Assessing the Robustness of Power Posing

Power poses – where do we stand?

“…The preregistration format, rather than inhibiting scientific discovery or exploration, actually then points researchers to the next direction for their research, while at the same time making it clear to the reader that such obtained effects were exploratory and not confirmatory. Prior to our special issue, there were other attempts to replicate the power pose effect (Garrison, Tang, & Schmeichel, 2016;Ranehill et al, 2015). Ranehill et al could not replicate the effect on hormonal level, but found the manipulation to influence felt power.…”

Posture and Social Problem Solving, Self-Esteem, and Optimism

“…Specifically, we sought to investigate how expansive posture impacts one's confidence for problem-solving as well as the psychological attitudes of self-esteem and optimism. While previous research provides evidence for a positive relationship between posture and self-esteem and improved mood (Nair, Sagar, Sollers, Consedine, & Broadbent, 2015) as well as evidence linking posture with overall thought confidence/metacognition (Briñol, Petty, & Wagner, 2009), recent research suggests the impact of power posing or attitudes and behavior may be quite limited (Ranehill et al, 2015;Simmons & Simonsohn, 2017). The current findings, or lack thereof, between power posing, psychological attitudes and problem-solving self-efficacy provide additional evidence in the debate against the validity of power posing and its practical utility.…”

“…A few possible explanations suggest that the present study may be missing a specific condition to induce the embodied cognition that has accompanied power posing in previous research. However, a more plausible explanation, and one that has been echoed by other researchers, is that we clearly have yet much to learn regarding specific conditions impacting embodied cognition (Ranehill et al, 2015).…”

“…Initial power analysis based on the effect sizes found in similar studies in the field (power=.8, ∝=.05; Carney, Cuddy, & Yap, 2010;Ranehill et al, 2015), revealed a sample size of 103 participants would be suitable and the current sample was 123 participants. While this study had ample power to detect an effect, no effect was in fact present.…”

“…In their recent conceptual replication of the well known Carney, Cuddy, and Yap (2010) study, Ranehill et al (2015) found that while expansive posture impacted participants' self-reported feelings of power it did not impact participants' behavior or hormonal levels. Their findings suggest that the impact of power posing may be quite limited, or at the least, subject to moderation by very specific conditions such as gender, awareness of the hypothesis of the experiment or the "cover story" variable, timing of the posture, and the experimenters' blindness to the experiment.…”