So what does that mean? When you think about power, people tended to think only about testosterone, because that was about dominance.
But really, power is also about how you react to stress.
So do you want the high-power leader that's dominant, high on testosterone, but really stress reactive? Probably not, right? You want the person who's powerful and assertive and dominant, but not very stress reactive, the person who's laid back.
So we know that in primate hierarchies, if an alpha needs to take over, if an individual needs to take over an alpha role sort of suddenly, within a few days, that individual's testosterone has gone up significantly and his cortisol has dropped significantly.
So we have this evidence, both that the body can shape the mind, at least at the facial level, and also that role changes can shape the mind.
So what happens, okay, you take a role change, what happens if you do that at a really minimal level, like this tiny manipulation, this tiny intervention? "For two minutes," you say, "I want you to stand like this, and it's going to make you feel more powerful."
So this is what we did.
We decided to bring people into the lab and run a little experiment, and these people adopted, for two minutes, either high-power poses or low-power poses, and I'm just going to show you five of the poses, although they took on only two.
So here's one. A couple more.
This one has been dubbed the "Wonder Woman" by the media.