I’ve been worrying about posture lately – mine, my daughter’s, my son’s. (My husband’s is pretty good or else he’d be on the list too). And it’s not just a shallow “you need to look your best!” type of thing either. Once I learned about “embodied cognition,” I began to worry in earnest.
Embodied cognition is a growing scientific field based on the concept that we think not only with our brains, but with our bodies. We know that our mind can influence the way our body reacts – if we’re sad we may hunch over, for example – but the link between body and mind runs both ways. So, the poor posture may be making us feel sad. The idea is that the form of our body can affect our mind.
So when I remind myself or my kids to stand up straight, I am trying to improve mood and confidence level with a simple lifting of the spine, not just make them (and me) look more presentable. (Though in all honesty I’m hoping to achieve all those things!)
Research now links the clothes we wear to cognitive function too. Scientists have termed this “enclothed cognition” and the results of a study conducted at Northwestern University with students and white lab coats were surprising.
In one experiment, students were given the task of spotting inconsistencies in two pictures. One group of students wore a white lab coat and were told it was a painter’s coat. The other group wore the same white lab coat but were told it was a doctor’s coat.
Surprisingly, the students in the “doctor’s coat” outperformed the painters. It turned out that merely the idea of wearing a doctor’s coat increased the student’s level of attention to detail.
A similar experiment tested whether it helped the students to simply see the doctor’s coat hanging on a door while they took the test. But it was the physical wearing and feeling of the coat, along with perceiving it to be a doctor’s, that improved the test scores.
Unfortunately, both of my kids’ schools require uniforms, and I doubt I could convince them to wear a doctor’s coat on test days anyway, but embodied cognition can still help them on tests.
They can “power pose” before going into the classroom.
Power posing is the idea of lifting your chest and reaching your arms wide or propping them cockily on your hips. Doing these types of poses for two minutes can help increase confidence before a job interview, a speech, a sports competition or a test. A Harvard study revealed that doing these poses didn’t just give you a mental boost, it changed you physically. Power posers showed an 8 percent increase in testosterone, while those who didn’t pose revealed a decrease of 10 percent. The stress hormone cortisol went up 15 percent in the low power posers and down 25 percent in the high power ones.
Even though I know about this posing technique, I never seem to use it before something important in my life and I’m not sure why. Am I too lazy to take the extra two minutes of power posing in the bathroom before something important like a job interview, or do I just feel silly and think, deep down, that it’s a bunch of nonsense?
After reading anecdotes about other people who have tried power posing with success, I’m now determined to give it a go and to teach my kids about it as well. After all, it certainly can’t hurt.
Contact the writer: hskyler@ocregister.comTwitter: @heatherskyler
