Your body language may shape who you are | Amy Cuddy | TED

Summary

このスクリプトは、姿勢が自信や自己認識に与える影響について探求しています。研究者であるAmy Cuddyは、2分間の力強いポーズがテストステロンとコルチゾールというホルモンの変化を引き起こし、自信を高める可能性があることを示します。また、力なさを感じるポーズは逆にストレス反応を増やします。彼女は、人々が緊張する評価的な状況に直面する前に、小さな調整を加えることで大きな変化を生むことができると説きます。

Takeaways

• 🧍‍♂️ 姿勢を変えることで、自信や自己イメージに大きな影響を与えることができます。
• 🤔 私たちは他人のボディーランゲージに興味を持ち、それが私たちの判断や生活に大きな役割を果たします。
• 🤝 ハンドシェイクなどの非言語的なコミュニケーションは、人々の評価や選挙結果に影響を及ぼす可能性があります。
• 📉 身体的自信を欠くと、自己閉じるような姿勢をとることが多く、それが参加度や成績に影響を与えることがあります。
• 💪 力強さや優越感を表現する姿勢は、動物界でも見られる普遍的な非言語的な表現です。
• 📈 力の有無は、自己肯定感やリスクの受け止め方、さらにはホルモンの変化にも関連しています。
• 🧘‍♀️ 短期間の力強いポーズは、自己イメージやホルモンレベルに変化をもたらす可能性があります。
• 🎓 学業やキャリアにおいて、参加度が成績に大きく影響を与えるため、自信を高める方法が重要です。
• 🤔 私たちの非言語行動は、他人だけでなく、自分自身の思考や感情にも影響を与えることがわかります。
• 🔄 短期間のポージングは、自己肯定感やリスク許容度に変化をもたらし、長期的な自己変化の始まりになる可能性があります。
• 🌟 力の有無にかかわらず、小さな変化が大きな結果につながることを学び、自信を高める方法を共有しましょう。

Q & A

この講演の目的は何ですか？

講演の目的は、姿勢の小さな変化が人生に大きな影響を与える可能性を示し、特に他人や自分自身に対する非言語的なコミュニケーションの重要性を強調することです。

講演者はなぜ最初に聴衆に自分の姿勢をチェックするよう求めていますか？

講演者は姿勢が個人の自信や力の感覚に影響を与えることを強調するために、聴衆が自分の現在の姿勢を意識し、後でそれを変更して効果を確認できるように求めています。

非言語的なコミュニケーションはなぜ重要だと考えますか？

非言語的なコミュニケーションは、他人との相互作用やコミュニケーションにおいて重要な役割を果たしており、他人の判断や私たち自身の思考や感情に影響を与えます。

研究によると、医師の患者との相互作用のビデオを見るだけで医師が訴訟される可能性はどれくらい予測できますか？

研究によると、人々が30秒の音声なしの医師と患者の相互作用のビデオを見るだけで、医師の優しさについての判断が医師が訴訟されるかどうかを予測するのに役立つことが示されています。

政治候補者の顔の判断が選挙結果をどれくらい予測できますか？

アレックス・トドロフの研究表明、政治候補者の顔を1秒だけ見るだけで、70％の米連邦上院選挙と知事選挙の結果を予測することができます。

力の非言語的な表現とは何ですか？

力の非言語的な表現は、自分を大きく見せることや空間を占めることで、動物界では広がることに関連しています。人間でも同じであり、力を感じるときには手を広げたり、空間を占めるような姿勢をとることがあります。

無力感を感じるときにはどのような姿勢を取ることが多いでしょうか？

無力感を感じるときには、自分を小さくして閉じ込める傾向があります。例えば、腕を周りにする、足を組んだり、体を小さくすることで自分を守るような姿勢を取ることがあります。

講演者はなぜビジネススクールの学生の姿勢に興味を持ちましたか？

講演者はビジネススクールの学生の姿勢に興味を持ち、特にその姿勢がどのように彼らの参加度や成績に影響を与えるかを研究しました。特に女性と男性の間で姿勢の違いとその意味について注目しました。

「フェイクして実現する」という考え方は何を意味していますか？

「フェイクして実現する」とは、一時的に力強く見える姿勢をとることで、実際には自信や力を感じるようになる可能性があるという考え方です。これは、非言語的な姿勢が私たちの思考や感情に影響を与えることを示しています。

講演者が提唱する「力のポーズ」はどのような効果がありますか？

「力のポーズ」は、短期間のポーズ（2分間）であっても、テストステロンの増加とコルチゾールの減少を引き起こし、自信や断片感を高める効果があります。これにより、ストレス反応を減らし、より自信に満ちた行動を起こすことができるようになります。

講演者が最後に強調している「小さな調整が大きな変化を生む」という考え方はどのような意義がありますか？

「小さな調整が大きな変化を生む」という考え方は、短期間の力のポーズのような小さな行動が、長期的には人生の重要な場面での自信や成功につながる可能性があることを示しています。これは、小さな変化が積み重ねば大きな結果を生むことを意味します。

Outlines

00:00

🧍‍♂️ 姿勢を変えて人生を変える

この段落では、姿勢を変えることで人生に大きな変化をもたらすことが議論されています。講演者は、姿勢を大きく開くと力強さと自己肯定感を引き起こすことを説明し、それによって人々の人生がどのように変わるかを探求しています。また、動物界における力強さの表現や、人間の非言語的なコミュニケーションにおける役割について触れています。

05:02

🤝 手の動きでわかる力関係

この段落では、非言語的なコミュニケーションにおける手の動きがどのように人々の判断や推測に影響を与えるかが説明されています。研究者の例を通じて、医師や政治家の手の動きが患者や選挙結果にどのように影響を与えるかが示されています。また、オンラインでの表情文字の使用や、非言語的なコミュニケーションが人々の自己認識に与える影響についても触れられています。

10:04

🦅 力強さの姿勢と内面への影響

この段落では、力強さの姿勢が人々の行動や自己認識にどのように影響を与えるかが研究されています。実験として、参加者が2分間異なる姿勢をとることで、自己肯定感やリスク許容度、さらにはホルモンレベルに変化が生じることが報告されています。これらの結果は、姿勢が人々の内面的な状態に大きな影響を与えることを示しています。

15:07

🎓 学業や職業面での自己肯定感の欠如

この段落では、講演者が自身の過去の経験を通じて、自己肯定感の欠如とその克服について語ています。かつての車事故とその後の学業への挑戦、そして普林ストンでの苦闘を振り返り、自己肯定感を再び取り戻すために奮闘した過程を共有しています。また、学生との出会いを通じて、他人にもその経験を共有し、自己肯定感を高める方法を提唱しています。

20:10

💪 姿勢を変えることで自己肯定感を高める

最後の段落では、講演者は姿勢を変えることで自己肯定感を高め、それが人生に与える影響について説きます。実験の結果をもとに、高_POWERの姿勢をとることで、自己肯定感やリスク許容度、さらにはホルモンレベルにポジティブな影響を与えることができると報告しています。また、この知識を広めることで、資源に乏しい人々にも力を持たせることができると強調しています。

Keywords

💡ボディランゲージ

ボディランゲージとは、言葉を使わずに感情や意図を伝える非言語的なコミュニケーションの形態です。このビデオでは、ボディランゲージが他人とのコミュニケーションや自己への影響に重要な役割を果たすことに焦点が当てられています。例えば、人々の姿勢が自信や力強さを表現する方法として使用され、他人からの判断や自己の感情に影響を与えると示されています。

💡ポーズ

ポーズは、特定の感情や状態を表現するためにとる身体的姿勢です。ビデオでは、力強さや支配的なポーズが自己の自信や他人からの印象にどのように影響を与えるかが強調されています。例えば、「ワンダーウーマン」のようなポーズは、力強さや自己肯定感を高める効果があると示されています。

💡自己肯定感

自己肯定感は、自分自身を肯定し、自信を持つ感情的な状態です。ビデオでは、正しいポーズをとることで自己肯定感が高まり、それによって人々の思考や感情にポジティブな影響を与えることが示されています。また、自己肯定感の低下は、人を小さくし、無力感に陥れることを例に挙げています。

💡ホルモン

ホルモンは、身体的機能や感情的な状態を制御する体内の化学物質です。ビデオでは、テストステロンとコルチゾールという2つのホルモンが力強さと無力感を调节する鍵となるホルモンであることが説明されています。テストステロンが支配的なホルモンで、コルチゾールがストレスホルモンであることが強調されています。

💡ストレス

ストレスは、心理的または物理的な要因によって引き起こされる身体的または精神的な緊張状態です。ビデオでは、ストレスが無力感や自己肯定感の低下につながり、また逆に力強さや自信に影響を与えるホルモンレベルを変化させることが示されています。

💡自己効力感

自己効力感は、自分の能力や行動が目標達成につながると信じる心理的な状態です。ビデオでは、自己効力感が高まった人々がより積極的に行動し、結果的により良い結果を引き起こすことが強調されています。

💡非言語的なコミュニケーション

非言語的なコミュニケーションは、言葉を使わずに情報を伝えるコミュニケーションの形態であり、表情、声の調子、身体接触などが含まれます。ビデオでは、非言語的なコミュニケーションが人々の判断や他人との関係に大きな影響を与えると述べています。

💡自己認識

自己認識は、個人が自分自身を理解し、評価する能力です。ビデオでは、自己認識が身体的なポーズによって影響を受け、自信や自己効力感につながることに焦点が当てられています。

💡フェイクして成績を上げる

フェイクして成績を上げるは、一時的に自信や力強さを装って行動することで、実際にそれらの感情を内部化し、自己肯定感を高める戦略です。ビデオでは、このアプローチが自己肯定感の低下や無力感に悩む人々にとって効果的であることが示されています。

💡自己効力感のギャップ

自己効力感のギャップは、同じ能力を持つ人々の中でも、自己効力感のレベルに差が存在することを指します。ビデオでは、ビジネススクールの女子学生と男子学生の間のグレードギャップが、自己効力感のギャップに起因すると指摘しています。

💡ポジティブな自己イメージ

ポジティブな自己イメージは、自分自身に対して肯定的な見方を持つことです。ビデオでは、ポジティブな自己イメージを持つことが、人々の行動や他人からの反応に好影響を与え、自己肯定感を高めることに重点が置かれています。

Highlights

通过改变姿势两分钟，可以显著改变你的生活。

身体语言影响我们对他人的判断，包括招聘、约会等重要生活结果。

社会科学家发现，观察30秒无声的医生-病人互动视频，可以预测医生是否会被起诉。

普林斯顿大学的研究表明，对政治候选人面孔的一秒钟判断，可以预测70%的美国参议院和州长竞选结果。

非言语信号不仅影响他人对我们的看法，也影响我们对自己的看法和生理状态。

权力的非言语表达在动物界和人类中都是通过扩展身体来表现的。

感到无力时，人们倾向于收缩身体，减少占用空间。

在MBA课堂中，学生的非言语行为与他们的参与度和成绩有关。

研究表明，女性比男性更可能表现出缺乏权力的身体语言。

通过简单的身体姿势改变，可以影响个体的荷尔蒙水平，如睾丸素和皮质醇。

高权力姿势可以在两分钟内增加个体的睾丸素水平，降低皮质醇水平。

实验发现，采取高权力姿势的人在赌博任务中更愿意冒险。

权力姿势可以在压力情境下，如工作面试，改善个体的表现。

媒体误解了权力姿势的研究，认为应该在面试中使用，但这并不是研究的本意。

权力姿势可以在面试前帮助个体调整心态，而不是在面试中使用。

通过权力姿势，个体可以在压力情境下更好地展示自己，而不是仅仅模仿。

演讲者分享了自己作为“冒名顶替者”的经历，以及如何通过“假装直到成为”克服它。

即使是微小的改变，如两分钟的权力姿势，也可以导致生活中的巨大变化。

演讲者鼓励大家分享这项科学发现，尤其是那些资源有限的人，因为它简单易行。

Transcripts

Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast

So I want to start by offering you a free no-tech life hack,

and all it requires of you is this:

that you change your posture for two minutes.

But before I give it away, I want to ask you to right now

do a little audit of your body and what you're doing with your body.

So how many of you are sort of making yourselves smaller?

Maybe you're hunching, crossing your legs, maybe wrapping your ankles.

Sometimes we hold onto our arms like this.

Sometimes we spread out. (Laughter)

I see you.

So I want you to pay attention to what you're doing right now.

We're going to come back to that in a few minutes,

and I'm hoping that if you learn to tweak this a little bit,

it could significantly change the way your life unfolds.

So, we're really fascinated with body language,

and we're particularly interested in other people's body language.

You know, we're interested in, like, you know — (Laughter) —

an awkward interaction, or a smile,

or a contemptuous glance, or maybe a very awkward wink,

or maybe even something like a handshake.

Narrator: Here they are arriving at Number 10.

This lucky policeman gets to shake hands with the President of the United States.

Here comes the Prime Minister -- No. (Laughter) (Applause)

(Laughter) (Applause)

Amy Cuddy: So a handshake, or the lack of a handshake,

can have us talking for weeks and weeks and weeks.

Even the BBC and The New York Times.

So obviously when we think about nonverbal behavior,

or body language -- but we call it nonverbals as social scientists --

it's language, so we think about communication.

When we think about communication, we think about interactions.

So what is your body language communicating to me?

What's mine communicating to you?

And there's a lot of reason to believe that this is a valid way to look at this.

So social scientists have spent a lot of time

looking at the effects of our body language,

or other people's body language, on judgments.

And we make sweeping judgments and inferences from body language.

And those judgments can predict really meaningful life outcomes

like who we hire or promote, who we ask out on a date.

For example, Nalini Ambady, a researcher at Tufts University,

shows that when people watch 30-second soundless clips

of real physician-patient interactions,

their judgments of the physician's niceness

predict whether or not that physician will be sued.

So it doesn't have to do so much

with whether or not that physician was incompetent,

but do we like that person and how they interacted?

Even more dramatic, Alex Todorov at Princeton

has shown us that judgments of political candidates' faces

in just one second predict 70 percent

of U.S. Senate and gubernatorial race outcomes,

and even, let's go digital,

emoticons used well in online negotiations

can lead you to claim more value from that negotiation.

If you use them poorly, bad idea. Right?

So when we think of nonverbals, we think of how we judge others,

how they judge us and what the outcomes are.

We tend to forget, though, the other audience

that's influenced by our nonverbals, and that's ourselves.

We are also influenced by our nonverbals,

our thoughts and our feelings and our physiology.

So what nonverbals am I talking about?

I'm a social psychologist. I study prejudice,

and I teach at a competitive business school,

so it was inevitable that I would become interested in power dynamics.

I became especially interested in nonverbal expressions

of power and dominance.

And what are nonverbal expressions of power and dominance?

Well, this is what they are.

So in the animal kingdom, they are about expanding.

So you make yourself big, you stretch out,

you take up space, you're basically opening up.

It's about opening up.

And this is true across the animal kingdom.

It's not just limited to primates.

And humans do the same thing. (Laughter)

So they do this both when they have power sort of chronically,

and also when they're feeling powerful in the moment.

And this one is especially interesting because it really shows us

how universal and old these expressions of power are.

This expression, which is known as pride,

Jessica Tracy has studied.

She shows that people who are born with sight

and people who are congenitally blind do this

when they win at a physical competition.

So when they cross the finish line and they've won,

it doesn't matter if they've never seen anyone do it.

They do this.

So the arms up in the V, the chin is slightly lifted.

What do we do when we feel powerless?

We do exactly the opposite.

We close up. We wrap ourselves up.

We make ourselves small.

We don't want to bump into the person next to us.

So again, both animals and humans do the same thing.

And this is what happens when you put together high and low power.

So what we tend to do when it comes to power

is that we complement the other's nonverbals.

So if someone is being really powerful with us,

we tend to make ourselves smaller. We don't mirror them.

We do the opposite of them.

So I'm watching this behavior in the classroom,

and what do I notice?

I notice that MBA students really exhibit the full range of power nonverbals.

So you have people who are like caricatures of alphas,

really coming into the room, they get right into the middle of the room

before class even starts, like they really want to occupy space.

When they sit down, they're sort of spread out.

They raise their hands like this.

You have other people who are virtually collapsing

when they come in. As soon they come in, you see it.

You see it on their faces and their bodies,

and they sit in their chair and they make themselves tiny,

and they go like this when they raise their hand.

I notice a couple of things about this.

One, you're not going to be surprised.

It seems to be related to gender.

So women are much more likely to do this kind of thing than men.

Women feel chronically less powerful than men,

so this is not surprising.

But the other thing I noticed

is that it also seemed to be related to the extent

to which the students were participating, and how well they were participating.

And this is really important in the MBA classroom,

because participation counts for half the grade.

So business schools have been struggling with this gender grade gap.

You get these equally qualified women and men coming in

and then you get these differences in grades,

and it seems to be partly attributable to participation.

So I started to wonder, you know, okay,

so you have these people coming in like this, and they're participating.

Is it possible that we could get people to fake it

and would it lead them to participate more?

So my main collaborator Dana Carney, who's at Berkeley,

and I really wanted to know, can you fake it till you make it?

Like, can you do this just for a little while

and actually experience a behavioral outcome

that makes you seem more powerful?

So we know that our nonverbals govern how other people

think and feel about us. There's a lot of evidence.

But our question really was,

do our nonverbals govern how we think and feel about ourselves?

There's some evidence that they do.

So, for example, we smile when we feel happy,

but also, when we're forced to smile

by holding a pen in our teeth like this, it makes us feel happy.

So it goes both ways.

When it comes to power, it also goes both ways.

So when you feel powerful,

you're more likely to do this,

but it's also possible that when you pretend to be powerful,

you are more likely to actually feel powerful.

So the second question really was, you know,

so we know that our minds change our bodies,

but is it also true that our bodies change our minds?

And when I say minds, in the case of the powerful,

what am I talking about?

So I'm talking about thoughts and feelings

and the sort of physiological things that make up our thoughts and feelings,

and in my case, that's hormones. I look at hormones.

So what do the minds of the powerful versus the powerless look like?

So powerful people tend to be, not surprisingly,

more assertive and more confident, more optimistic.

They actually feel they're going to win even at games of chance.

They also tend to be able to think more abstractly.

So there are a lot of differences. They take more risks.

There are a lot of differences between powerful and powerless people.

Physiologically, there also are differences

on two key hormones: testosterone, which is the dominance hormone,

and cortisol, which is the stress hormone.

So what we find is that high-power alpha males in primate hierarchies

have high testosterone and low cortisol,

and powerful and effective leaders

also have high testosterone and low cortisol.

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.

Here are a couple more.

So you can be standing or you can be sitting.

And here are the low-power poses.

So you're folding up, you're making yourself small.

This one is very low-power.

When you're touching your neck, you're really protecting yourself.

So this is what happens.

They come in, they spit into a vial,

for two minutes, we say, "You need to do this or this."

They don't look at pictures of the poses.

We don't want to prime them with a concept of power.

We want them to be feeling power.

So two minutes they do this.

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.

And we've all had the feeling, right?

So it seems that our nonverbals do govern how we think and feel about ourselves,

so it's not just others, but it's also ourselves.

Also, our bodies change our minds.

But the next question, of course,

is, can power posing for a few minutes

really change your life in meaningful ways?

This is in the lab, it's this little task, it's just a couple of minutes.

Where can you actually apply this?

Which we cared about, of course.

And so we think where you want to use this is evaluative situations,

like social threat situations.

Where are you being evaluated, either by your friends?

For teenagers, it's at the lunchroom table.

For some people it's speaking at a school board meeting.

It might be giving a pitch or giving a talk like this

or doing a job interview.

We decided that the one that most people could relate to

because most people had been through, was the job interview.

So we published these findings,

and the media are all over it,

and they say, Okay, so this is what you do

when you go in for the job interview, right?

(Laughter)

You know, so we were of course horrified, and said,

Oh my God, no, that's not what we meant at all.

For numerous reasons, no, don't do that.

Again, this is not about you talking to other people.

It's you talking to yourself.

What do you do before you go into a job interview? You do this.

You're sitting down. You're looking at your iPhone --

or your Android, not trying to leave anyone out.

You're looking at your notes,

you're hunching up, making yourself small,

when really what you should be doing maybe is this,

like, in the bathroom, right? Do that. Find two minutes.

So that's what we want to test. Okay?

So we bring people into a lab,

and they do either high- or low-power poses again,

they go through a very stressful job interview.

It's five minutes long. They are being recorded.

They're being judged also,

and the judges are trained to give no nonverbal feedback,

so they look like this.

Imagine this is the person interviewing you.

So for five minutes, nothing, and this is worse than being heckled.

People hate this.

It's what Marianne LaFrance calls "standing in social quicksand."

So this really spikes your cortisol.

So this is the job interview we put them through,

because we really wanted to see what happened.

We then have these coders look at these tapes, four of them.

They're blind to the hypothesis. They're blind to the conditions.

They have no idea who's been posing in what pose,

and they end up looking at these sets of tapes,

and they say, "We want to hire these people,"

all the high-power posers.

"We don't want to hire these people.

We also evaluate these people much more positively overall."

But what's driving it?

It's not about the content of the speech.

It's about the presence that they're bringing to the speech.

Because we rate them on all these variables

related to competence, like, how well-structured is the speech?

How good is it? What are their qualifications?

No effect on those things. This is what's affected.

These kinds of things.

People are bringing their true selves, basically.

They're bringing themselves.

They bring their ideas, but as themselves,

with no, you know, residue over them.

So this is what's driving the effect, or mediating the effect.

So when I tell people about this,

that our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behavior,

and our behavior can change our outcomes, they say to me,

"It feels fake." Right?

So I said, fake it till you make it.

It's not me.

I don't want to get there and then still feel like a fraud.

I don't want to feel like an impostor.

I don't want to get there only to feel like I'm not supposed to be here.

And that really resonated with me,

because I want to tell you a little story about being an impostor

and feeling like I'm not supposed to be here.

When I was 19, I was in a really bad car accident.

I was thrown out of a car, rolled several times.

I was thrown from the car.

And I woke up in a head injury rehab ward,

and I had been withdrawn from college,

and I learned that my IQ had dropped by two standard deviations,

which was very traumatic.

I knew my IQ because I had identified with being smart,

and I had been called gifted as a child.

So I'm taken out of college, I keep trying to go back.

They say, "You're not going to finish college.

Just, you know, there are other things for you to do,

but that's not going to work out for you."

So I really struggled with this, and I have to say,

having your identity taken from you, your core identity,

and for me it was being smart,

having that taken from you,

there's nothing that leaves you feeling more powerless than that.

So I felt entirely powerless.

I worked and worked, and I got lucky,

and worked, and got lucky, and worked.

Eventually I graduated from college.

It took me four years longer than my peers,

and I convinced someone, my angel advisor, Susan Fiske,

to take me on, and so I ended up at Princeton,

and I was like, I am not supposed to be here.

I am an impostor.

And the night before my first-year talk,

and the first-year talk at Princeton is a 20-minute talk to 20 people.

That's it.

I was so afraid of being found out the next day

that I called her and said, "I'm quitting."

She was like, "You are not quitting,

because I took a gamble on you, and you're staying.

You're going to stay, and this is what you're going to do.

You are going to fake it.

You're going to do every talk that you ever get asked to do.

You're just going to do it and do it and do it,

even if you're terrified and just paralyzed

and having an out-of-body experience,

until you have this moment where you say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm doing it.

Like, I have become this. I am actually doing this.'"

So that's what I did.

Five years in grad school,

a few years, you know, I'm at Northwestern,

I moved to Harvard, I'm at Harvard,

I'm not really thinking about it anymore, but for a long time I had been thinking,

"Not supposed to be here."

So at the end of my first year at Harvard,

a student who had not talked in class the entire semester,

who I had said, "Look, you've gotta participate or else you're going to fail,"

came into my office. I really didn't know her at all.

She came in totally defeated, and she said,

"I'm not supposed to be here."

And that was the moment for me.

Because two things happened.

One was that I realized,

oh my gosh, I don't feel like that anymore.

I don't feel that anymore, but she does, and I get that feeling.

And the second was, she is supposed to be here!

Like, she can fake it, she can become it.

So I was like, "Yes, you are! You are supposed to be here!

And tomorrow you're going to fake it,

you're going to make yourself powerful, and, you know --

(Applause)

And you're going to go into the classroom,

and you are going to give the best comment ever."

You know? And she gave the best comment ever,

and people turned around and were like,

oh my God, I didn't even notice her sitting there. (Laughter)

She comes back to me months later,

and I realized that she had not just faked it till she made it,

she had actually faked it till she became it.

So she had changed.

And so I want to say to you, don't fake it till you make it.

Fake it till you become it.

Do it enough until you actually become it and internalize.

The last thing I'm going to leave you with is this.

Tiny tweaks can lead to big changes.

So, this is two minutes.

Two minutes, two minutes, two minutes.

Before you go into the next stressful evaluative situation,

for two minutes, try doing this, in the elevator,

in a bathroom stall, at your desk behind closed doors.

That's what you want to do.

Configure your brain to cope the best in that situation.

Get your testosterone up. Get your cortisol down.

Don't leave that situation feeling like, oh, I didn't show them who I am.

Leave that situation feeling like,

I really feel like I got to say who I am and show who I am.

So I want to ask you first, you know, both to try power posing,

and also I want to ask you to share the science, because this is simple.

I don't have ego involved in this. (Laughter)

Give it away. Share it with people,

because the people who can use it the most

are the ones with no resources and no technology

and no status and no power.

Give it to them because they can do it in private.

They need their bodies, privacy and two minutes,

and it can significantly change the outcomes of their life.

Thank you.

(Applause)