2.5 Getting Competent

It is without a doubt that language proficiency is valuable for successful communication to happen, however it is not enough to know the grammar and vocabulary of that language especially if intercultural communication is involved. People enjoy interacting with others who are skilled at encoding and decoding verbal and nonverbal messages. As we age, most people tend to think that we become better at communicating as we practice and internalize social and cultural norms related to sending (encoding) and interpreting (decoding) information but it is not necessarily true.

People do not always say what they want to say. In addition, people do not mean what they say sometimes. All of which requires us to read between the lines. However, as we have already learned, we receive little, if any, official instruction in nonverbal communication, which may cause great trouble for people when trying to “read other people's mind.”Competent communicators understand how to use (or avoid) touch, proximity in physical space and paralinguistic sounds to convey their intended meanings. They also know language pragmatics like how to use politeness strategies in making requests. In addition, competent communicators can avoid insults and gaffes by not using gestures that may mean very different things in a host culture as opposed to one's home culture.

Research shows that education and training in communication especially nonverbal communication can lead to quick gains in knowledge and skill. As nonverbal communication accounts for an important part of our communication and it is where instruction is rare yet greatly needed, we can all benefit by improving our nonverbal communicative effectiveness.

2.5.1 Guidelines to Improve Nonverbal Competence

The most important guideline when trying to decode nonverbal communication is to realize that there is no such a thing as nonverbal dictionary. Although some books may contain many valid “rules” of nonverbal communication, those rules are always relative to the individual, social, and cultural contexts in which an interaction takes place. The second guideline for decoding nonverbal signals is to acknowledge that certain nonverbal signals are related. Nonverbal rule books are not effective because they typically view nonverbal signals in isolation, similar to how dictionaries separately list denotative definitions of words. Therefore, the third guideline is that rather than using a list of specific rules, it is more advised to develop more general tools that are useful and adaptable to interpret nonverbal cues under various specific contexts.

While it is important to recognize that we send nonverbal signals through multiple channels simultaneously, we can also increase our nonverbal communication competence by becoming more aware of how it operates in specific channels. Although no one can truly offer you a rule book on how to send and receive every type of nonverbal signal effectively, the following advice may help you communicate better with specific nonverbal messages under a less academic perspective.

2.5.2 AppIicabIe Advice in Specific Channels

1) Vocalics

People often decode personality traits from a person's vocal quality. Verbal fluency is one of the strongest factors influencing persuasiveness and this is especially true when it comes to communicating in a second language. Verbal fillers are often used subconsciously and can negatively affect your credibility and reduce the clarity of your message when speaking in situations that are more formal. Take out your phone and record a few sentences of your normal talking, then play it out for your ears. Try to monitor your use of verbal fillers and begin to eliminate them when unneeded. Beginner speakers can often reduce their use of verbal fillers noticeably over just a short period.

Vocal variety enforces the engagement and understanding of both the listener and the speaker. As a result, having a more expressive voice that varies appropriately in terms of rate, pitch, and volume can help you achieve communication goals related to maintaining attention, effectively conveying information, and getting others to act in a particular way. If you want to know more about the use of vocal elements to achieve communicative goals, watch the video clip (you can find it in the summary of this section) made by Julian Treasure, a vocal coach who spoke at TED to tell you how to speak so that people want to listen to you.

2) Eye contact

We are all familiar with the fact that if interested or excited a person's pupil will dilate. Eye contact is the primary nonverbal way of indicating engagement or interest. The length of a gaze, the frequency of glances, patterns of fixation, and blink rate are all very important cues in nonverbal communication. That is probably why we call the love of our lives “the apple of eye” (掌上明珠).

Eye contact is useful for initiating and regulating conversations. To make sure someone is available for interaction and to avoid being perceived as rude, it is usually a good idea to “catch their eye” before you start talking to them. Likeness between speakers generally increases as mutual gazing increases. Therefore, if you are talking to someone, make sure to engage in eye contact for 60%-70% of the time, but if you are listening, increase that to 90% to show that you are listening. Avoiding eye contact or shifting your eye contact from place to place can lead others to think you are being deceptive or inattentive.

3) Facial expressions and posture

You can use facial expressions to manage your expressions of emotions to intensify what you are feeling, to diminish what you are feeling, to cover up what you are feeling, to express a different emotion that you are feeling, or to simulate an emotion that you are not feeling. Smiles are especially powerful as an immediacy behavior and a rapport-building tool. Smiles can also help to disarm a potentially hostile person or de-escalate conflict.

The head leaning over and being supported by a hand can typically be decoded as a sign of boredom, the thumb supporting the chin and the index finger touching the head close to the temple or eye as a sign of negative evaluative thoughts, and the chin stroke as a sign that a person is going through a decision-making process. In terms of seated posture, leaning back is usually decoded as a sign of informality and indifference, straddling a chair as a sign of dominance (but also some insecurity because the person is protecting the vulnerable front part of his or her body), and leaning forward as a signal of interest and attentiveness.

4) Gestures

Gestures send messages about your emotional state. Since many gestures are spontaneous or subconscious, it is important to raise your awareness of them and monitor them. Be aware that clenched hands may signal aggression or anger, nail biting or fidgeting may signal nervousness, and finger tapping may signal boredom. Keep in mind that adaptors can hurt your credibility in more formal or serious interactions. Figure out what your common adaptors are and monitor them so that you can avoid creating unfavorable impressions.

On the other hand, making common illustrative gestures while speaking, can help our verbal communication to become more engaging. Although it does not always mean a person is being honest, displaying palms is largely unconsciously encoded and decoded as a sign of openness and truthfulness. Conversely, crossing your arms in front of your chest is decoded almost everywhere as a negative gesture that conveys defensiveness. Verbal communication is enhanced when a good listener allows the time for reflection on the subject at hand;meanwhile letting other people interject and have the floor. It is the same when you have something to say, instead of verbal injection or abrupt interrupting which may seem rude, you can use nonverbal signals like leaning in or using a brief gesture like subtly raising one hand or the index finger to signal to another person that you would like to soon take the floor. It is without a doubt that cultural differences of possible nonverbal cues need to be taken into consideration while doing so.

5) Haptics

Consider the status and power dynamics involved in a touch. Offering a solid handshake can significantly help communicate confidence and enthusiasm that can be useful on those important occasions. The first rule of a good handshake is to stand up and look the other person in the eye before shaking hands. It is not smart to grab into the other person's palm or be a bone crusher. Besides, always shake with your right hand and do not have your left hand in your pocket. We typically decode people putting their hands in their pocket as a gesture that indicates shyness or discomfort. Men often subconsciously put their hands in their pockets when they do not want to participate in a conversation. However, displaying the thumb or thumbs with the rest of the hand in the pocket is a signal of a dominant or authoritative attitude. If you want to appear to be more powerful to show your dominant position, make sure you are on the left, so when you shake someone's hand, your hand will stay on top. Nevertheless, you cannot always be on the left, if you are on the wrong side, take some defensive measures, like the wrap.

Culture, status, gender, age, and setting can all influence how we send and interpret touch messages. In professional and social settings, it is generally OK to give other people a handshake. However, touching others on the arm or shoulder with our hand may be slightly more intimate. The following are some types of touch to avoid:

• Avoid interrupting touches such as hugging someone while he or she is talking to someone else.

• Avoid startling or surprising another person with your touch.

• Avoid touching strangers unless being introduced or when offered assistance.

• Avoid moving people out of the way with only touch—pair your touch with a verbal message like “excuse me.”

• Avoid combining touch with negative criticism. For example, a hand on the shoulder during a critical statement can increase a person's defensiveness and seem condescending or aggressive.

Group Work

Chronemics is also closely related to nonverbal communication norms. Therefore, it is important to know it to improve communicative competence. Discuss the following questions with your partners:

Our lateness or promptness can send messages about our professionalism, dependability, or other personality traits. Formal time usually applies to professional situations in which we are expected to be on time or even a few minutes early. You generally would not want to be late for work, a job interview, a medical appointment, and so on. Informal time applies to casual and interpersonal situations in which there is much more variation in terms of expectations for promptness. For most social meetings with another person or a small group, you can be five minutes late without having to offer much of an apology or explanation. For larger social gatherings you can usually be fifteen minutes late as long as your late-arrival does not interfere with others' plans or preparations. However, norms relating to chronemics vary with different cultural background. Try to find out some difference between cultures if you can and we will continue the discussion in Chapter 3.

Exercises

1. Choose the best answer from the following choices.

1) How long should a person maintain eye contact with his or her audience while talking?

A. 20%-30% of the time.

B. 30%-40% of the time.

C. 50%-60% of the time.

D. 60%-70% of the time.

2) Eye contact is the primary nonverbal way of __________.

A. substituting verbal messages

B. repeating verbal messages

C. indicating engagement or interest

D. expressing identity

3) In which of the following cases, do we NOT have to avoid touching?

A. Hugging others when they are talking to someone else.

B. Surprising another person with your touch.

C. Touching strangers without being introduced.

D. Combining touch with appreciation.

4) Which of the following is NOT advised when trying to shake hands with another person?

A. Always stand up and look the other person in the eye before shaking hands.

B. Always shake with your left hand.

C. Do not grab into the other person's palm or be a bone crusher.

D. Do not have your left hand in your pocket.

5) In which of the following cases is it OK to be five minutes late without having to offer much of an apology or explanation?

A. Family reunion.

B. First date.

C. Job interview.

D. Work.

2. Tell whether the following statements are true or false.

1) The most important guideline for decoding nonverbal communication is to realize that nonverbal dictionary does not exist.

2) Since people send nonverbal signals through multiple channels simultaneously, it is impossible to increase our nonverbal communication competence by becoming more aware of how it operates in specific channels.

3) Eye contact is useful for initiating and regulating conversations.

4) Leaning forward is usually decoded as a sign of informality and indifference.

5) Illustrators can hurt your credibility in more formal or serious interactions.

3. Finish the following tasks with your own understanding.

At the TED Global 2012 conference, social psychologist Amy Cuddy gave the talk “Your body language shapes who you are” in which she explained in detail how power posing can affect the level of hormones resulting in gaining of personal confidence. Her talk has gained great popularity among the viewers, even being crowned one of TED's most watched talks ever, yet it also received quite a few critics from peer scientists. Watch the talk before reading one of the critical essays and Cuddy's rebuttal article. Try to state your own opinion concerning the effects of postures.

Summary

It is fair to say that improving one's nonverbal communication competence is the first step towards successful communication. Since nonverbal communication is more ambiguous than verbal communication, we have to learn to interpret these cues as clusters within contexts. In short, you cannot read people's nonverbal communication like a book. Moreover, there are not A-to-Z guides that capture the complexity of nonverbal communication. When you are listening, pay attention to other people's intonations, as well as facial expressions and other body language, making sure you do not miss anything sent voicelessly in order to eliminate the possibilities of being misled. Incongruent nonverbal cues are helpful when the message you decoded does not match up with the speaker's intent. Do not forget to get more information from multichannel nonverbal clues before jumping to any conclusion in these cases. Meanwhile, being conscious of your own physicality and feelings, which means monitoring the nonverbal signals you sent which may be perceived incongruent: Do your gestures match your words? Alternatively, do they give away what you are really thinking about? To better train yourself with self-monitoring you can record yourself with a video camera or an audio recorder to see how you communicate non-verbally, or just practice to improve your nonverbal communicative skills in front of a mirror.

Following the suggestions to become a better encoder of nonverbal communication will lead to better decoding competence as the awareness increases. Yet, as with all aspects of communication, improving your nonverbal communication takes commitment and continued effort. Once the initial effort is put into improving your nonverbal encoding and decoding skills and those new skills are put into practice, people are encouraged by the positive reactions from others. As you get better at monitoring and controlling your nonverbal behaviors and understanding how nonverbal cues affect your interaction, you may show more competence in multiple types of communication.

Complementary 1: Scripts of Julian Treasure's TED Lecture—How to Speak So that People Want to Listen

The human voice: It's the instrument we all play. It's the most powerful sound in the world, probably. It's the only one that can start a war or say “I love you.” And yet many people have the experience that when they speak, people don't listen to them. And why is that? How can we speak powerfully to make change in the world?

What I'd like to suggest, there are a number of habits that we need to move away from. I've assembled for your pleasure here seven deadly sins of speaking. I'm not pretending this is an exhaustive list, but these seven, I think, are pretty common habits that we can all fall into.

First, gossip. Speaking ill of somebody who's not present. Not a nice habit, and we know perfectly well the person gossiping, five minutes later, will be gossiping about us.

Second, judging. We know people who are like this in conversation, and it's very hard to listen to somebody if you know that you're being judged and found wanting at the same time.

Third, negativity. You can fall into this. My mother, in the last years of her life, became very negative, and it's hard to listen. I remember one day, I said to her, “It's October 1 today, ” and she said, “I know, isn't it dreadful? ”

It's hard to listen when somebody is that negative.

And another form of negativity, complaining. Well, this is the national art of the U.K. It's our national sport. We complain about the weather, sport, about politics, about everything, but actually, complaining is viral misery. It's not spreading sunshine and lightness in the world.

We've all met this guy. Maybe we've all been this guy. Some people have a blamethrower. They just pass it on to everybody else and don't take responsibility for their actions, and again, hard to listen to somebody who's being like that.

Penultimate, the sixth of the seven, embroidery, exaggeration. It demeans our language, actually, sometimes. For example, if I see something that really is awesome, what do I call it?

And then, of course, this exaggeration becomes lying, and we don't want to listen to people we know are lying to us.

And finally, dogmatism. The confusion of facts with opinions. When those two things get conflated, you're listening into the wind. You know, somebody is bombarding you with their opinions as if they were true. It's difficult to listen to that.

So here they are, seven deadly sins of speaking. These are things I think we need to avoid. But is there a positive way to think about this? Yes, there is. I'd like to suggest that there are four really powerful cornerstones, foundations, that we can stand on if we want our speech to be powerful and to make change in the world. Fortunately, these things spell a word. The word is “hail, ” and it has a great definition as well. I'm not talking about the stuff that falls from the sky and hits you on the head. I'm talking about this definition, to greet or acclaim enthusiastically, which is how I think our words will be received if we stand on these four things.

So what do they stand for? See if you can guess. The H, honesty, of course, being true in what you say, being straight and clear. The A is authenticity, just being yourself. A friend of mine described it as standing in your own truth, which I think is a lovely way to put it. The I is integrity, being your word, actually doing what you say, and being somebody people can trust. And the L is love. I don't mean romantic love, but I do mean wishing people well, for two reasons. First of all, I think absolute honesty may not be what we want. I mean, my goodness, you look ugly this morning. Perhaps that's not necessary. Tempered with love, of course, honesty is a great thing. But also, if you're really wishing somebody well, it's very hard to judge them at the same time. I'm not even sure you can do those two things simultaneously. So hail.

Also, now that's what you say, and it's like the old song; it's what you say; it's also the way that you say it. You have an amazing toolbox. This instrument is incredible, and yet this is a toolbox that very few people have ever opened. I'd like to have a little rummage in there with you now and just pull a few tools out that you might like to take away and play with, which will increase the power of your speaking.

Register, for example. Now, falsetto register may not be very useful most of the time, but there's a register in between. I'm not going to get very technical about this for any of you who are voice coaches. You can locate your voice, however. So if I talk up here in my nose, you can hear the difference. If I go down here in my throat, which is where most of us speak from most of the time. But if you want weight, you need to go down here to the chest. Do you hear the difference? We vote for politicians with lower voices. It's true, because we associate depth with power and with authority. That's register.

Then we have timbre. It's the way your voice feels. Again, the research shows that we prefer voices which are rich, smooth, warm, like hot chocolate. Well if that's not you, that's not the end of the world, because you can train. Go and get a voice coach. And there are amazing things you can do with breathing, with posture, and with exercises to improve the timbre of your voice.

Then prosody. I love prosody. This is the sing-song, the metalanguage that we use in order to impart meaning. It's root one for meaning in conversation. People who speak all on one note are really quite hard to listen to if they don't have any prosody at all. That's where the word “monotonic” comes from, or monotonous, monotone. Also, we have repetitive prosody now coming in, where every sentence ends as if it were a question when it's actually not a question, it's a statement?

And if you repeat that one, it's actually restricting your ability to communicate through prosody, which I think is a shame, so let's try and break that habit.

Pace.

I can get very excited by saying something really quickly, or I can slow right down to emphasize, and at the end of that, of course, is our old friend silence. There's nothing wrong with a bit of silence in a talk, is there? We don't have to fill it with ums and ahs. It can be very powerful.

Of course, pitch often goes along with pace to indicate arousal, but you can do it just with pitch. Where did you leave my keys? (Higher pitch) Where did you leave my keys? So, slightly different meaning in those two deliveries.

And finally, volume. (Loud) I can get really excited by using volume. Sorry about that, if I startled anybody. Or, I can have you really pay attention by getting very quiet. Some people broadcast the whole time. Try not to do that. That's called podcasting—imposing your sound on people around you carelessly and inconsiderately. Not nice.

Of course, where this all comes into play most of all is when you've got something really important to do. It might be standing on a stage like this and giving a talk to people. It might be proposing marriage, asking for a raise, a wedding speech. Whatever it is, if it's really important, you owe it to yourself to look at this toolbox and the engine that it's going to work on, and no engine works well without being warmed up. Warm up your voice.

Actually, let me show you how to do that. Would you all like to stand up for a moment? I'm going to show you the six vocal warm-up exercises that I do before every talk I ever do. Any time you're going to talk to anybody important, do these. First, arms up, deep breath in, and sigh out, ahhhhh, like that. One more time. Ahhhh, very good. Now we're going to warm up our lips, and we're going to go Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba. Very good. And now, brrrrrrrrrr, just like when you were a kid. Brrrr. Now your lips should be coming alive. We're going to do the tongue next with exaggerated la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. Beautiful. You're getting really good at this. And then, roll an R. Rrrrrrr. That's like champagne for the tongue. Finally, and if I can only do one, the pros call this the siren. It's really good. It starts with “we” and goes to “aw.” The “we” is high, and the “aw” is low. So you go, weeeaawww, weeeaawww.

Fantastic. Give yourselves a round of applause. Take a seat, thank you.

Next time you speak, do those in advance.

Now let me just put this in context to close. This is a serious point here. This is where we are now, right? We speak not very well to people who simply are not listening in an environment that's all about noise and bad acoustics. I've talked about that on this stage in different phases. What would the world be like if we were speaking powerfully to people who were listening consciously in environments which were actually fit for purpose? Or to make that a bit larger, what would the world be like if we were creating sound consciously and consuming sound consciously, and designing all our environments consciously for sound? That would be a world that does sound beautiful, and one where understanding would be the norm, and that is an idea worth spreading.

Thank you.

Complementary 2: Scripts of Amy Cuddy's TED Lecture—Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are

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're 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.

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'mbady, 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 US 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're 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'd 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 others' 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 as 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, OK, 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're 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, OK, 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're 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, OK, so this is what you do when you go in for the job interview, right?

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. OK? 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're 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'd 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, and 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've 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'm not supposed to be here. I'm 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're 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're 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've become this. I'm 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're! You're supposed to be here! And tomorrow you're going to fake it. You're going to make yourself powerful, and, you know—

And you're going to go into the classroom, and you're 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. 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.