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

Summary

本文探讨了肢体语言对个人心理和生理状态的影响。演讲者Amy Cuddy通过研究发现，采取高权力姿态的人在两分钟内，其荷尔蒙水平发生变化，能够更加自信、乐观，而低权力姿态则导致相反效果。她鼓励人们在面对压力情境时，通过简单的肢体调整来提升自我感知的力量，从而改善生活结果。

Takeaways

• 🧍‍♂️ 改变姿势两分钟可以显著影响你的生活，提升自信和改善生活结果。
• 🔍 人们非常关注身体语言，尤其是他人的身体语言，它在社交互动中起着重要作用。
• 🤝 握手等非语言行为可以影响人们对他人的看法，甚至影响重要的生活决策。
• 🧐 社会科学家研究显示，人们通过观察他人的身体语言来判断对方，这可能预测重要的生活结果。
• 💪 权力和支配的非语言表现通常与扩张有关，如占据空间和展开身体。
• 🤗 感到无力时，人们倾向于收缩身体，减少自己的存在感。
• 👩‍🏫 在MBA课堂中，学生的非语言行为与他们的参与度和成绩相关联。
• 🤔 研究表明，假装拥有某种感觉，如力量感，实际上可以导致真正感受到这种感觉。
• 🧬 权力感与两种关键激素有关：睾丸素（支配激素）和皮质醇（压力激素）。
• 📈 实验表明，采取高权力姿势的人在风险承受、睾丸素水平和皮质醇水平上都有积极变化。
• 🚀 即使是短时间的高权力姿势也能在压力情境下改善个人的表现和自我感受。
• 🌟 最后，演讲者鼓励人们在面临压力时尝试力量姿势，并分享这一科学发现，以帮助那些缺乏资源的人。

Q & A

演讲者提供了一个什么样的生活小技巧来改善我们的身体语言？

演讲者提供了一个简单的生活小技巧，即改变我们的姿势两分钟，这可能会显著改变我们的生活。

为什么演讲者建议我们在演讲开始前先进行一次身体姿势的自我检查？

演讲者建议我们进行身体姿势的自我检查，以意识到我们可能在无意识中采取了让自己显得更小的姿势，比如弯腰、交叉双腿或抱臂，这可能会影响我们的自信和他人对我们的看法。

演讲者提到了哪些非语言行为对我们的判断和生活结果有重大影响？

演讲者提到了握手、面部表情、在线表情符号的使用等非语言行为，这些行为会影响我们对他人的判断，甚至可能预测重要的生活结果，如工作聘用或晋升、约会邀请等。

Nalini Ambady的研究显示了什么？

Nalini Ambady的研究表明，当人们观看30秒无声的医生与病人互动视频时，他们对医生友好程度的判断可以预测该医生是否会被起诉。

Alex Todorov的研究揭示了什么？

Alex Todorov的研究揭示了人们在仅仅一秒钟内对政治候选人面部表情的判断，可以预测70%的美国参议院和州长竞选结果。

为什么我们的非语言行为对我们自己也有影响？

我们的非语言行为不仅影响他人对我们的看法，也影响我们自己的心理和生理状态。例如，当我们采取扩张性的姿势时，我们可能会感到更有力量和自信。

演讲者如何定义权力和支配的非语言表达？

演讲者定义权力和支配的非语言表达为扩张性的姿势，比如让自己显得更大、伸展身体、占据空间，这在动物界和人类中都是相同的。

演讲者提到了哪些与权力相关的性别差异？

演讲者提到，在MBA课堂上，女性比男性更可能采取让自己显得更小的姿势，这可能与女性长期感到的权力感较低有关。

演讲者和Dana Carney进行的实验是关于什么的？

演讲者和Dana Carney进行的实验是关于人们是否可以通过采取高权力姿势或低权力姿势两分钟来改变他们的荷尔蒙水平，从而影响他们的行为和感受。

实验结果表明，采取高权力姿势的人在哪些方面发生了变化？

实验结果表明，采取高权力姿势的人在风险承受能力、睾酮水平和皮质醇水平方面发生了积极的变化，他们更愿意参与赌博，感到更有力量。

演讲者如何建议我们利用这些发现来改善我们的生活？

演讲者建议我们在面临评估性或社会威胁性的情况时，比如工作面试，可以尝试采取高权力姿势两分钟，以帮助我们调整心态，提高自信，减少压力反应。

演讲者分享了她个人的一个什么经历来说明'fake it till you become it'的观点？

演讲者分享了她19岁时遭遇严重车祸后，智商下降，感到无力和像个骗子一样的经历。她通过不断努力和'fake it till you become it'的方式，最终在学术上取得了成功。

演讲者为什么鼓励我们分享这个发现？

演讲者鼓励我们分享这个发现，因为这是一个简单且不需要任何资源或技术的方法，对于那些没有资源、技术、地位和权力的人来说，它可以在私下里显著改变他们的生活结果。

Outlines

00:00

🧍‍♂️ 身体语言与个人力量

Amy Cuddy在演讲中首先介绍了一个无需技术的生活小技巧，即改变身体姿态两分钟，这可能会显著改变你的生活。她邀请听众审视自己的姿势，指出人们常常无意识地采取收缩或封闭的姿势，如弯腰驼背、交叉双腿或手臂环绕。Cuddy强调，身体语言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。她提到，社会科学家已经研究了身体语言对判断的影响，这些判断可能预测重要的生活结果，如招聘或晋升。Cuddy还讨论了权力和支配的非言语表达，如动物王国中的扩张行为，以及人类在感到强大时采取的类似姿势。

05:02

🤝 权力姿态与自我感知

Cuddy探讨了在动物界和人类中，权力和支配的非言语表达通常与身体扩张有关，而感到无力时则会采取收缩姿势。她观察到MBA学生在课堂上表现出不同程度的权力姿态，女性比男性更倾向于采取封闭和收缩的姿势。Cuddy提出，这种身体语言的差异可能与学生的参与度和成绩有关。她和合作者Dana Carney进行了实验，研究是否通过模仿高权力姿态可以影响个体的生理状态和行为，从而提高他们的参与度和表现。实验结果显示，即使是短暂的模仿高权力姿态，也能引起荷尔蒙水平的变化，这些变化与自信、乐观和低压力反应有关。

10:04

🔬 实验验证：姿态对心理和生理的影响

Cuddy描述了一个实验，参与者被要求在实验室中采取高权力或低权力姿态两分钟。实验前后，参与者提供了唾液样本以测量荷尔蒙水平。结果显示，高权力姿态的参与者在风险承受能力、睾酮水平和皮质醇水平上都有显著的正向变化，而低权力姿态的参与者则表现出相反的趋势。这些发现表明，即使是短暂的身体姿态改变也能影响个体的心理状态和生理反应，从而可能影响他们的行为和决策。

15:07

🎓 从自我怀疑到自我实现

Cuddy分享了她个人的经历，她曾在19岁时遭遇严重车祸，导致智商下降，感到无力和自我怀疑。尽管如此，她通过不懈努力，最终在学术上取得了成功。她鼓励人们在面临压力和评估时，通过采取高权力姿态来增强自信和力量感。Cuddy强调，通过不断实践，人们可以克服内心的自我怀疑，实现自我转变。

20:10

💪 持续实践，直至成为自我

Cuddy以自己的经历和对学生的影响为例，强调了持续实践高权力姿态的重要性。她建议在面临压力情况之前，花两分钟时间采取高权力姿态，以调整心理状态，提高睾酮水平，降低皮质醇水平，从而更好地应对挑战。Cuddy鼓励听众不仅尝试这种姿态，而且分享这一科学发现，特别是那些资源有限、地位不高的人，因为这种简单的方法可以在私密环境中实施，对他们的生活产生积极影响。

Keywords

💡非语言行为

非语言行为指的是人们在交流过程中通过身体语言、面部表情、姿态等非言语方式传达的信息。在视频中，非语言行为是核心主题之一，演讲者探讨了人们如何通过非语言行为来沟通和影响他人，以及这些行为如何影响个人和他人的判断和行为。例如，演讲者提到了人们通过观察他人的非语言行为来做出快速判断，如握手、微笑或蔑视的眼神。

💡权力姿态

权力姿态是指那些表现出自信、支配和力量的身体语言，如展开身体、占据空间等。视频中提到，无论是在动物界还是人类社会，权力姿态都与扩张身体有关，这表明了一种社会地位或力量的体现。例如，演讲者提到了'骄傲'这一权力姿态，无论是看得见的人还是天生失明的人，在赢得比赛时都会表现出这种姿态。

💡无权力姿态

无权力姿态与权力姿态相反，表现为收缩身体、减少占用空间，给人一种脆弱或不自信的印象。在视频中，演讲者讨论了当人们感到无力时，他们的身体语言会如何变化，如裹紧自己、缩小身体尺寸，这与动物界中低地位个体的行为相似。

💡荷尔蒙

荷尔蒙是身体内分泌系统产生的化学信使，对情绪、行为和生理功能有重要影响。视频中，演讲者特别提到了两种与权力感受相关的荷尔蒙：睾酮（与支配相关）和皮质醇（与压力相关）。演讲者通过实验发现，权力姿态可以在短时间内改变这两种荷尔蒙的水平，从而影响个体的心理状态和行为。

💡自我感知

自我感知是指个体对自身特性、情感和行为的认识和理解。视频中强调了非语言行为不仅影响他人对我们的看法，也影响我们对自己的看法。例如，演讲者提到，当人们采取权力姿态时，他们不仅在他人眼中显得更有力量，而且自己也会感到更有力量。

💡评估情况

评估情况指的是那些个体可能感到被评价或评判的社交环境，如工作面试、演讲或任何形式的考核。视频中提到，权力姿态可以在这些高压评估情况下帮助个体调整心态，提高自信，从而更好地表现自己。

💡行为结果

行为结果是个体行为的直接后果或影响。视频中演讲者探讨了非语言行为如何影响行为结果，例如，通过改变身体姿态，个体可能会在社交互动中表现得更加自信和有力，这可能会改变他人对他们的看法，进而影响他们的职业发展或人际关系。

💡心理状态

心理状态是指个体在某一时刻的情绪、思维和感受的总和。视频中演讲者提到，通过改变身体语言，个体的心理状态也会随之改变，例如，权力姿态可以增加个体的自信和乐观，而无权力姿态则可能导致更多的压力和不安。

💡身份认同

身份认同是个体对自己是谁以及属于哪个社会群体的认识。在视频中，演讲者通过自己的经历探讨了身份认同的丧失和重建。她提到，在经历严重车祸后，她失去了'聪明'这一核心身份认同，感到无力和不属于学术界，但通过不断努力和'假装'，她最终重建了自己的身份认同。

💡自我实现

自我实现是指个体通过行动和经历逐渐成为自己想要成为的人。视频中演讲者鼓励观众不要只是'假装直到成功'，而是要'假装直到成为'，意味着通过持续的行动和实践，个体可以真正地内化和实现自己期望的角色或身份。

💡微小调整

微小调整指的是在行为或习惯上做出的小改变，这些改变可能对个体的生活产生重大影响。视频中演讲者强调，即使是简单的两分钟权力姿态，也可以引起荷尔蒙水平的变化，从而影响个体的心理状态和行为表现，最终可能导致生活中的重大变化。

Highlights

演讲者提供了一个无需技术的生活小技巧，即改变姿势两分钟，可能会显著改变你的生活。

身体语言在社交互动中的重要性，以及我们如何通过身体语言对他人做出判断。

社会科学家研究了身体语言对判断的影响，这些判断可以预测重要的生活结果，如招聘或晋升。

研究表明，观察无声的医生与病人互动片段，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我们对他人的判断，也影响我们自己，包括我们的思想、情感和生理状态。

社会心理学家Amy Cuddy研究了权力和支配的非言语表达，发现这些表达在动物界和人类中普遍存在。

权力的非言语表达包括扩展身体，占据空间，而无力感则表现为收缩身体，使自己变小。

在MBA课堂上，学生展示出从高权力到低权力的非言语行为的全范围。

研究表明，女性比男性更可能表现出低权力的非言语行为。

非言语行为与学生的参与度和表现有关，这在MBA课堂中尤其重要，因为参与度占成绩的一半。

实验表明，通过简单的姿势改变，人们可以在两分钟内体验到行为结果，从而显得更有权力。

研究表明，当我们感到强大时，我们更可能采取扩展性的姿势，反之亦然，假装强大也能让我们感到强大。

权力和无力感与两种关键激素有关：睾酮（主导激素）和皮质醇（压力激素）。

实验发现，采取高权力姿势的人在风险承受能力、睾酮水平和皮质醇水平上都有显著变化。

权力姿势可以在实际生活中应用，特别是在评估情况或社交威胁情况下。

在高压的工作面试中，采取高权力姿势的人被评价为更有能力和被雇佣的可能性更高。

Amy Cuddy分享了她个人的经历，说明了如何通过“假装直到成为”来克服内心的无力感。

演讲者鼓励人们尝试权力姿势，并分享这一科学发现，特别是那些资源、技术、地位和权力较少的人。

即使是微小的调整，也可能带来巨大的变化，建议在进入下一个压力大的评估情况前两分钟尝试权力姿势。

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)