We then ask them, "How powerful do you feel?" on a series of items, and then we give them an opportunity to gamble, and then we take another saliva sample. That's it. That's the whole experiment.
So this is what we find.
Risk tolerance, which is the gambling, we find that when you are in the high-power pose condition, 86 percent of you will gamble.
When you're in the low-power pose condition, only 60 percent, and that's a whopping significant difference.
Here's what we find on testosterone.
From their baseline when they come in, high-power people experience about a 20-percent increase, and low-power people experience about a 10-percent decrease.
So again, two minutes, and you get these changes.
Here's what you get on cortisol.
High-power people experience about a 25-percent decrease, and the low-power people experience about a 15-percent increase.
So two minutes lead to these hormonal changes that configure your brain to basically be either assertive, confident and comfortable, or really stress-reactive, and feeling sort of shut down.