There has been some controversy recently regarding the effects of “power poses” on how people think. The implications of power poses are relevant to design because furniture, such as types of seats, can support siting in these sorts of postures. “Power poses” are often described as open and as expansive (relatively spread out/taking up a lot of room).
Cuddy and her team, using sophisticated statistical techniques, reviewed the literature related to power posing and found “strong evidential value for postural-feedback (i.e., power posing) effects and particularly robust evidential value for effects on emotional and affective states (e.g., mood and evaluations, attitudes, and feelings about the self).” In summary: “an expansive posture…leads people to feel more powerful.”
Amy Cuddy, S. Schultz, and Nathan Fosse. “P-Curving a More Comprehensive Body of Research on Postural Feedback Reveals Clear Evidential Value for Power-Posing Effects: Reply to Simmons and Simonsohn.” Psychological Science, in press, DOI: 10.1177/0956797617746749
Sally Augustin, PhD,a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.