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The Nonverbal Power of Posture

Reading nonverbal cues is not just about understanding psychology or threat detection. It can also help us get a job!

In an exciting 2010 study, Drs. Dana Carney, Amy Cuddy, and Andy Yap discuss the concept of “power posing.” Essentially, this involves using certain postures to appear more powerful. This can lead an interviewer or other interlocutor to see you as more worthy of a job, promotion or other benefit, according this insightful blog. However, Humintell’s Dr. David Matsumoto has a few words of caution.

Fundamentally, this notion of power posturing is related to evolutionary cues, where individual animals and humans seek to demonstrate their power in order to gain a greater share of available resources. Our posture greatly determines both our levels of testosterone but also our stress, both of which help convey, in very subtle ways, an impression of power.

So what is this power posture? According to Dr. Carney’s team, it involves expansive and open postures, such as spreading one’s limbs and otherwise appearing to be larger than one is. This is contrasted sharply with a slumped posture, where the body is constrained in a form of self-defense.

The details of these postures may be intuitively familiar, as many readers will probably notice. When we stand straight with arms wide, or if we lean forward, we feel and evince a sense of power. On the other hand, if we fold arms in the lap to hug our own torsos, there is a sense of meekness and submission.

Dr. Matsumoto cautions us that this does not necessarily work if we are feeling conflicted emotions: “Engaging in such postures or gestures or facial expressions would not necessarily trigger the experience in individuals who already are experiencing an emotion, especially a strong one.”

However, this does not mean that posture cannot amplify or affect our postures. As the aforementioned study explains, our posture can result in different chemical configurations being manifest in our brain. But can this actually help us seem competent and get a job? The answer, according to Dr. Matsumoto, is a little mixed.

On the one hand, there is certainly a lot conveyed through a sense of powerful posture. Not only can it make other people, such as an interviewer for a job, conclude that we are self-confidant, but it can even make us feel more self-assured and competent. This is not to be downplayed.

That said, it does not actually make us competent. Dr. Matsumoto cautions the aspiring power posturer against overreliance on these tactics:

“My advice would be to first gain actual competence in your field. The last thing anyone should want is to look confident and not really be competent. Once one has a certain degree for a lot of competence, adopting certain body postures may help to feel even more confident and powerful … but they’ve got to believe it and be able to back it up with real competence.”

Still, it is good to be aware of the power of postures. As we have noted in previous blogs, certain postures, such as that of triumph, are universal and deeply rooted in our evolutionary roots. When we are trying to read other people, moreover, it is very helpful to be able to read their posture: do they seem anxious? Confident? Powerful?

Group Emotions of Violence

Last week we discussed the role of contempt, disgust, and anger in violence, but what is the role of group identity and differentiation?

In fact, recent scientific research has focused increasingly on the role of group-level emotions, as opposed to just those of each individual. This can have significant effects in shaping when group members or entire groups engage in violence.

The apprehension of an out-group, for instance, is a major factor in predicting violence. Group members naturally distinguish between in and out-groups, but the precise nature of how they ought to feel for the out group is more challenging. This confusion is fed into by their attempts to reconcile past experiences with that group and often ambiguous expectations within their own group for how the out group should be seen.

One major theory is known as the Infrahumanization Theory. This argues that distinctions between groups lead to a tendency to see one’s in group as more human and one’s out-group as somehow alien. This can generate contempt and disgust for the out-group while still fostering compassion and trust for the in group.

Often, this involves the feeling that other groups are animals, entailing a sense that they are lesser and bestial. Genocidal contexts often see the prevalent use of vermin or pest-themed language as justification, for instance.

So, how do group-level emotions arise? Some argue that the violent predictors of anger, disgust, and contempt stem from group-level feelings that demonized groups have violated group values, such as community or divinity.

Often these emotions can be fostered effectively by stories and narratives that distinguish the groups.  These have the pragmatic advantage of being easy to understand and to share, giving group leaders the ability to marshal emotions against an out-group.

Such narratives often focus on the out-group as a sort of oppressor, outside threat, or subversive. In each case, the in-group is portrayed as threatened by domination, conquest, or degradation. Naturally, these narratives may rely on a sense of binary opposition, where the in-group is naturally everything that their enemy is not. If the enemy is evil or insane, the in-group is good and stable.

While this discussion of group-level emotions may seem less than relevant for the context of predicting violence, especially in a domestic violence situation, the context surrounding a potentially violent situation is often important.

For instance, a law enforcement agent in interrogation with a suspected terrorist has to grapple with the terrorist’s potential disgust and contempt, as well as the narratives that are shaping this hostility.

The recognition of group differentials and emotional context can aid us greatly not only in detecting threat but also in reconciling seemingly intractable cultural differences in contentious situations.

Basic Emotions of Violence

As may be unsurprising to many of you, reading basic emotions in others may be a key to predicting violence.

Humintell has written for years on the importance of basic emotions, but does understanding these emotions help better understand or predict violent behavior? Drs. David Matsumoto, Hyi Sung Hwang, and Mark Frank all agree with a resounding “yes” in a blog article written for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Their observations ring true as an important explication of how fundamental our basic emotions can be.

Different emotions can mean categorically different things. For instance, contempt, disgust, and anger all refer to feelings of emotion towards an out-group, but they mean different things. Anger is usually channeled at somebody’s actions, while disgust and contempt are focused on the other person themselves.

They proceed to elaborate on the role that disgust can have in predicting violence. Disgust, they write, results in the desire to eliminate the disgusting object. Certainly, this can have horrifying consequences when applied to other people, and they point to genocidal leaders, terrorists, and mass shooters as consistently evincing disgust in public speeches or videos.

Contempt is a similar phenomenon as disgust, in that it focuses on another’s actions as they relate to status and hierarchy. That person is often seen as not fitting the status that they claim. This is a different sort of emotion, but it also leads to a disposition against the individual not just their actions.

Anger is often seen as an important predictor of violence, but given the context of terrorism and genocide, disgust may be the particularly salient emotion. That said, anger can easily be turned into disgust. Since anger is focused on a given situation or action, its conversion to disgust can involve a larger shift in attitude from a specific instance to a more general disposition towards an out-group.

Still, while disgust and contempt are being emphasized, anger has a crucial role here too. It is through anger that the hesitation against action is overcome. While an individual may be motivated to violence through disgust or contempt, it is through anger that they actually make this decision to act rather than to refrain.

This is all the case at a very physiological level as well. We act out of anger because anger increases our heart rate and blood flow. Similarly, disgust is a deep-seated emotion born out of our concerns for parasites and the need to ensure the safety of food and water.

It may be helpful to see these relationships more simply. Contempt and disgust lead to the breakdown of relations between groups or individuals, and anger leads to those same individuals actually acting on such hostility. This underscores the need to be able to not just detect anger but to read people’s emotions more broadly.