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Powerful postures do not lead to risky behaviors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2019

Outong Chen
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, ChinaGuangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, ChinaCenter for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
Zhaoning Yang
Affiliation:
School of Education and Psychology, University of Jinan, Jinan, China
Xuyun Tan
Affiliation:
Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
Zibei Gu
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing Key Lab of Applied Experimental Psychology, Beijing, China
Jun Chen*
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, ChinaGuangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, ChinaCenter for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
*
Author for correspondence: Jun Chen, Email: chenjunyrh@163.com

Abstract

Recent research has found that a specific manipulation of body postures can influence psychological states associated with power, including an individual’s feeling of power and risk-taking tendency, but the results vary. The purpose of this study is to replicate previous studies. A pilot experiment examined the validity of 10 postures extracted from multiple former studies. Only 4 postures were consistent with former studies. Experiment 1 replicates the study conducted by Carney, Cuddy, and Yap (2010). The results revealed that posture manipulations did not affect the participants’ risk-taking tendency. Experiment 2 is a preregistered experiment to replicate the study of Carney et al. (2010). Different from Experiment 1, data were analyzed with a Bayesian approach. The results of the former study again failed to be replicated, which indicates that the posture manipulations could not yield any effect on both power feelings and individuals’ risk-taking tendency. Thus, we concluded that (a) holding a specific series of body posture perceived as high or low power does not affect individuals’ feeling of power, and (b) holding a specific series of body posture perceived as high or low power does not affect individuals’ risk-taking tendency.

Information

Type
Original Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019
Figure 0

Figure 1.High power postures.

Figure 1

Figure 2.Low-power postures.

Figure 2

Figure 3.The development of the Bayes factors for the self-reported power feeling.

Note: Figure adapted from JASP, jasp-stats org.
Figure 3

Figure 4.The development of the Bayes factors for the risk-taking tendency.

Note: Adapted from JASP, jasp-stats.org.
Figure 4

Figure 5.Bayes factor robustness check of self-report power feeling.

Note: Adapted from JASP, jast-stats.org.
Figure 5

Figure 6.Bayes factor robustness check of risk-taking tendency.

Note: Adapted from JASP, jasp-stats.org.
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