Sensation_The New Science of Physical Intelligence

by Thalma Lobel

  The researchers wanted to make sure that it was the size of the product that was the determining factor rather than its price; after all, a large smoothie costs more than a small smoothie. In order to neutralize this variable, they designed a creative experiment. They set up tables in the lobbies of three residential buildings of the university with large banners that advertised a fictitious new bagel chain in the area. All three banners invited students to treat themselves to free bagels, but the banners differed in their content. The message on one banner said that we all feel powerless in the morning. The banner in the second lobby said that we all feel powerful in the morning, while the banner in the third lobby bore a neutral message, simply stating that it was morning.

  The researcher in each lobby acted as a company representative and invited the residents to taste the bagels. There were two plates on the table, one with numerous small pieces of different varieties of bagels, and the other with larger pieces of different bagels. The residents were asked to take and eat as many as they wanted, and then to evaluate how much they enjoyed the bagels. What the researchers were really interested in was how many small and how many large pieces each person took. The findings were similar to the results of the two studies just discussed: those in the low-power group (whose banner said that we feel powerless in the morning) took more large pieces than those in the other two groups. However, there was no difference in the number of small pieces; the only difference was in the number of large pieces of bagels taken. Since the bagels were free, this study demonstrates that the association between a powerful feeling and the size of a product is not necessarily due to the product’s price.

  The results suggest that the size of a chosen product signals status, even when the product itself has nothing to do with power and status. We all know that bigger cars and houses are status symbols, but these findings demonstrate that this association holds true for products that, on their own, are totally unrelated to power and status. Apparently, we gauge status not only by the size of someone’s car or house but also by the size of her or his coffee. And sometimes a bigger cup of coffee might compensate for the fact that, at a particular moment, nobody is listening to us.

  Take a Stand—Power Yourself Up

  “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog,” said Mark Twain.

  We humans assume powerful and powerless poses across different cultures using size and vertical positioning. We have seen that animals display dominance by spreading their limbs and taking up more space. Similarly, a powerful person may choose to stand, legs and arms spread, expanding in space. A submissive person might sit, head bowed, hands held close to the body, and legs together in order to shrink as much as possible, as do abused children and prisoners of war.

  Besides conveying power or weakness, is it possible that our postures influence the way we judge ourselves? Can power itself be embodied? Can the state of sitting or standing in a given position influence how powerful or powerless we feel? A group of researchers investigated this question, dividing participants in the study into two groups.23 Each group was asked to pose for two minutes. Those in the “power-pose” group were asked to stand and then to sit with their hands spread on the table and legs apart. Those in the low-power group were asked to sit down and later to stand with their hands around their bodies or between their knees, legs close together, limbs closed, and taking up as little space as possible.

  The researchers conducted a pretest to make sure that neither pose was more or less uncomfortable or difficult. Participants were unaware of the study’s true objective and were told that the experiment was examining how the placement of electrocardiography electrodes influences data collection. The researchers relied on several criteria to quantify how powerful the participants felt.

  The first measure was the simplest—they just asked participants how powerful they felt. Those who displayed high-power poses reported feeling more powerful than those who displayed low-power poses. The second measure gauged risk-taking behavior, because when people feel more powerful they are more likely to take risks. Each participant received two dollars and could either pocket the money or use it to gamble, with a chance of either losing the two dollars or doubling the sum. In other words, the participants could play it safe or take a risk. Eighty-six percent of participants in the power-pose group gambled, whereas only 60 percent of the low-power group took the risk. Merely posing for a couple of minutes in a powerful or powerless position caused participants to feel more or less powerful and influenced their risk-taking behavior.

  The researchers did not just measure participants’ feelings of power and their risk-taking behavior; they actually measured powerful feeling physiologically by taking saliva samples immediately after participants finished sitting or standing in their respective poses, and testing the saliva for two hormones: testosterone and cortisol. Testosterone is positively correlated with dominant (i.e., powerful) behavior. High levels of testosterone increase dominant behavior, and, reciprocally, dominant behavior increases testosterone levels. Cortisol is a stress hormone; people who feel powerful tend to have lower levels of cortisol than those who feel powerless.

  The results showed that those who were sitting and standing in high-power poses for two minutes had an increased level of testosterone and a decreased level of cortisol. In contrast, those who sat or stood in low-power positions demonstrated decreased testosterone levels and increased cortisol levels. These results lend major scientific support to embodiment theory. The hormone-level test results demonstrate that there is a clear association between our bodily positions and our feelings and behavior. Our bodies influence our minds. Simple postures can convey feelings of physical power as well as mental strength. We actually come to feel more emotionally powerful through the way our bodies feel physically.

  You can use this knowledge. Adjust your posture, movements, and mannerisms not only to project power but also to give yourself more feelings of confidence and efficacy. If you are feeling timid or unassertive, stand or sit in “power poses” to bolster your mental state. If you want to boost your confidence at a job interview; on a first date; or when joining a new group, showing up alone at a party where you don’t know anyone, or anticipating a difficult family meeting, just stand in a powerful pose for a few minutes before you enter a room (and while you’re interacting). You can change how you feel about yourself as well as your consequent behavior and the way others perceive you.

  When our parents or our teachers told us to sit up straight, most of us didn’t take them very seriously. But keeping your back straight really does influence your feelings of power and your behavior as well as what others think of you. Standing straight is good not only for the back but also for the soul!

  Conclusions and Implications

  Even abstract concepts are grounded in our perceptual and bodily experiences. Power is grounded in our perceptual experiences of both vertical positioning and size. The concept of power is represented in our minds along a vertical continuum, and it also takes into account the size and the volume of an object or another person. All the metaphors we’ve noted that use vertical positioning to depict status and power are more than just means of enriching our language. In fact, when we think of a person’s high status, our attention shifts upward.

  You can use the findings in this chapter to appear and feel more powerful. Height is directly related to power perception, and most women know the power of a good pair of heels. Although it’s no easy trick to genuinely elevate our status and influence in the world, if we combine all of the little tricks this body of research has taught us—like using high ground, picture angles, projections of stature, and body postures—together with some common sense, we can influence others’ perceptions of us. We can appear, like my grandfather, larger than life. Knowing this association between physical and psychological concepts, we also become far less susceptible to being influenced by a tall person or an upper-floor office. We can use these findi
ngs to deconstruct others’ attempts to influence us and to recognize subtle influences that may have swayed us unconsciously in the past.

  Postures and poses matter. Try not to sit on a chair that places you lower than others around you in business or social interactions. This is especially important in interactions that involve negotiations, high-stakes conversations, or first dates. It is also true for group projects where, on the surface, all partners seem to be endowed with the same power and responsibility. Be mindful of your position when sitting on the floor in a group, be mindful of your posture, and be mindful in general of the message you send by the space and level you occupy.

  Like many other findings in embodied cognition, these studies also point up our own biases and sometimes unfair judgments of other people. Remember that you have inherited an automatic bias associating size and vertical positioning with power, and with positivity and negativity. We often attribute positive or negative characteristics to people when in fact we are biased by vertical positioning. Whenever you find yourself judging others who are tall or short, or when you view photos that have been taken from different angles, devote a few seconds to deconstructing your impression and consider what has influenced your initial reaction. Being aware of these associations can help you minimize their untoward influence.

  No matter what your height, the research is clear: perceptions of both height and position are tools that anyone can use in order to influence perceptions of power and status.

  Out, Damned Spot: Guilt, Morality, and Cleaning

  Cleanliness is next to godliness.

  PROVERB

  It was the winter of 1989 and I was teaching Introduction to Psychology at Harvard University. December in Cambridge was a new experience for me, and my time had been divided between conducting my research, teaching, taking care of my children, and trying not to freeze. In short, I needed a vacation. Fortunately, a friend of mine called to ask if we wanted to join her on a two-day ski trip to Vermont. The hotel, she said quietly, as if she were revealing some great secret, was free of charge. All we had to do, she assured me, was attend a three-hour lecture and demonstration during which the sponsoring company would try to sell us a time-share unit. The psychologist in me was suspicious, but my friend assured me that we definitely wouldn’t have to buy. We would show up, sip coffee, and nod politely, then slip off to the slopes and get a desperately needed, utterly free vacation. So we ventured north, cars overpacked, four families with kids heading for the slopes.

  We arrived at a posh little ski resort and the following morning, after breakfast, were herded into a large room. Each couple sat separately with a smiling salesman who had papers at the ready. Our salesman slid into a well-practiced sales pitch about all the beautiful places we could go and the money we could save if we would only step up and embrace the joys of time-share property ownership. I’ll admit it looked enticing to be able to go to various places in the world and stay in a very nice unit that would cost us no more than our regular vacations. Through the salesman’s focused lens, I saw the appeal.

  Today, far from that ski lodge, I don’t remember most of the details, locations, or prices, or even what our salesman looked like. But I do remember this: he had an angry red stain on his white shirtsleeve, probably strawberry jelly or jam, that demanded my attention through his entire pitch. I felt that he was unclean, and I was turned off by the deal. After two hours of stain gazing, we politely said no and went on our way.

  One of the other couples we had come with wanted to buy a unit. When my friends challenged me about my reservations, I couldn’t really articulate a good answer; I just felt it wasn’t a good deal. The figures the company presented made sense, the photos were all beautiful, and the locales all spoke for buying. In the following years I would hear about people who felt trapped in their time-share units and were trying to get out of their contracts, but on that winter morning at the ski resort, I was unaware of any negative information.

  I just felt as if the deal had a stain on it.

  I am sure there were many reasons we did not buy the unit, but one of them was how I perceived the credibility of the salesman and the company he represented. I didn’t see him as reliable. It doesn’t seem very logical that the stain on his shirt that kept my rapt attention during our conversation could have represented his honesty. After all, investment decisions are not made on the basis of how wrinkled or dirty the salesman’s shirt is or whether he smells nice, right?

  Maybe not. Studies suggest, though, that, without even being aware of it, we associate morality with physical cleanliness, and we associate it powerfully.

  Cleansing the Soul: Rituals in Language, Religion, and Art

  Across cultures and in almost every religion, people often speak about issues of morality in terms of cleanliness. Expressions such as clean conscience, dirty work, and wash away sins all demonstrate the metaphorical link between ethical behavior and physical cleansing. Christians baptize their children so that they “should no longer be slaves of sin” (Romans 6:6). Judaism requires bathing in a special place, called a “mikveh,” for ritual purity, and ritual bathing is discussed in detail in the Bible. In Islam, it is customary to wash before prayer. Hindus bathe in the holy river Ganges to wash away their sins.

  Some gurus instruct those seeking to cleanse their souls to visualize the spiritual detritus they want to be rid of as mud and grime and to visualize washing away that dirt with water. Many psychologists believe that obsessive-compulsive disorder, which includes ritual hand washing, may result from fear of contamination and be related to feelings of mental pollution and guilt.

  Francis Ford Coppola’s classic film The Godfather depicts the complicated lives of a crime family: the Corleones. At the beginning of the film, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), a son of the aging Mafia boss, is a clean-cut American war hero whom the family intends to keep out of its nefarious business. But when his older brother, Sonny (James Caan), is assassinated and his father, the godfather (Marlon Brando), dies, Michael becomes the family’s leader and head of the syndicate, completing hs transformation into the godfather.

  Toward the end of the film, Michael attends the baptism of his infant son. The action cuts from the church, with the priest chanting Latin prayers, to assassins preparing their vehicles, disguises, and weapons. As Michael is asked, “Do you renounce Satan?” and replies, “I do renounce him,” we see a series of murders of Michael’s enemies. The holy scene of the baptism is deliberately juxtaposed with gruesome violence and, as water is finally poured over the head of the infant, we are meant to see the contradiction between salvation and sin. A man who was once pure becomes baptized with blood into a life of violence, renouncing his former innocence. Good and evil both exist, and Coppola uses water, with all its cleansing associations, and blood, with its vengeful and sacrificial connotations, to set up this essential moral contradiction.

  Who Keeps It Clean?

  The pervasive associations between cleanliness and morality are not just metaphors and artistic inventions, however. We really do associate physical cleaning with morality. Several researchers have explored these questions with fascinating results.

  Chen-Bo Zhong and Katie Liljenquist examined whether those who feel a threat to their moral selves have a greater urge to clean themselves, and therefore place a higher value on cleansing-related objects.1 In their first experiment, the researchers invited sixty students from Northwestern University to their laboratory and randomly assigned them to two groups. The students in one group were asked to recall an unethical act, such as a lie or misdeed, from their past and to describe their emotions about it. The students in the other group were asked to recall an ethical act—taking responsibility or telling the truth—and to describe how they felt about it. Students were told that this was a study investigating memories associated with ethical and unethical behavior. Then, in an ostensibly separate study, these same students were asked to participate in a word-completion task. The task consisted of series of incomple
te words, such as “s - - p,” “sh - - er,” and “w - - h,” that had to be made into complete words by filling in the blanks. Some words could be completed in several ways, but one of the possibilities was cleansing related. For example, “s - - p” could be completed as soap, a cleansing word, but it could also be completed as ship, slip, slap, stop, or step, words totally unrelated to cleansing. The results clearly indicated that those who recalled an unethical deed completed the words as cleansing-related ones more often than did people who recalled an ethical deed.

  In a second experiment, the researchers again asked participants to recall an ethical or an unethical deed. However, this time they asked participants to choose a free gift, either an antiseptic wipe or a pencil (the choices were found to be equally desirable in a pretest). Remarkably, 67 percent of the participants who thought about an unethical deed chose the antiseptic wipe, while only 33 percent of those who thought about the ethical deed chose this gift.

  In a third study, the researchers asked a group of undergraduate students to hand-copy a typeset story written in the first person, telling them that the experiment was about the connection between handwriting and personality. The students were then randomly divided into two groups. Students in the first group, the “ethical” group, were asked to hand-copy a story about an honest office worker in competition with a colleague, and students in the second group, the “unethical” group, were asked to hand-copy a story about an office worker, also in competition with a colleague, who had done something underhanded. Although the participants were only copying the story, it was written in the first person and so would make them identify with the character telling it.