Good posture may promote self-assurance and inspire confidence, a new study suggests.
"Most of us were taught that sitting up straight gives a good impression to other people," Richard Petty, co-author of the study and a
psychology professor at Ohio State University, said in a university news release published by HealthDay News on Sunday.
"But it turns out that our posture can also affect how we think about ourselves. If you sit up straight, you end up convincing yourself by the
posture you're in." The study involved 71 Ohio State University students who were asked to
sit up straight and push out their chest, or to slouch. The students were then asked about the positive or negative traits they'd show as a
hypothetical future employee.
"Their confident, upright posture gave them more confidence in their own thoughts, whether they were positive or negative," Petty stated. "People
assume their confidence is coming from their own thoughts. They don't realize their posture is affecting how much they believe in what they're
thinking. If they did realize that, posture wouldn't have such an effect."
In a similar experiment involving different students, "participants didn't report feeling more confident in the upright position than they did
in the slouched position, even though those in the upright position did report more confidence in the thoughts they generated," Petty said.
A previous study also found that people who nodded their heads had more confidence in their thoughts than those who shook their heads back and
forth.