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,” were the opening lines of Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk, “Your body language shapes who you are.” Cuddy, who is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, doubles as an American social psychologist known for her research on stereotyping and discrimination, emotions, power, nonverbal behavior, and the effects of social stimuli on hormone levels. Whether you were one of the lucky few in attendance at her actual lecture, or watched the event from the comfort of your computer, you were not the only ones enticed by her proposition. In fact, 28 million people and counting tuned into Cuddy’s lecture via online streaming, making her speech the second most watched TED Talk in the organization’s history.
Her upcoming lecture, “Fake it Until You Become It,” centers on just that. To be held in Boston College’s Robsham Theater Arts Center on Oct. 6 at 5 p.m., its title is derived from one of Cuddy’s most memorable statements during her TED Talk. She insists that sometimes the only way to beat imposter syndrome, the feeling that you do not belong, is to position your body such that it appears you do belong. Hosted by the Women’s Center of Boston College, in collaboration with Women in Business, Lean In, CSON Senate, LSOE Senate, the Undergraduate Government of Boston College, Graduate Student Life, Women’s Collaborative, and Word of Mouth, “Fake it Until You Become It” promises to be an event not to be missed. What is more, the event is entirely free! All that is necessary is that you present a BC ID at Robsham’s Office.
Cuddy holds a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Princeton University, an MA in Social Psychology from Princeton University, and a BA in Social Psychology from the University of Colorado. Prior to joining Harvard Business School, Cuddy was an assistant professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where she taught leadership in organizations in the MBA program and research methods in the doctoral program; and an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University, where she taught undergraduate social psychology. At Harvard Business School, she has taught MBA courses on negotiation, and power and influence, as well as executive education courses.
However, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing despite her many achievements. As a sophomore in college, she sustained a serious head injury in a car accident. Her doctors told her she was not likely to fully recover and should anticipate significant challenges finishing her undergraduate degree. Her IQ fell temporarily by two standard deviations, which is about 30 points in IQ test. She eventually completed her undergraduate studies and went on to earn a Ph.D. at Princeton. In an instance in which her body and brain suffered both physical, intellectual, and psychological damage, Cuddy’s resilience encouraged her to persevere despite these obstacles.
Drawn to the causes and consequences of feeling ambivalent emotions, the subsequent nonverbal behavior and communication, as well as hormonal responses to social stimuli, Cuddy began conducting extensive research surrounding the psychology of power, influence, nonverbal communication along with Susan Fiske and Peter Glick, both of Lawrence University. The study was most certainly not for nothing, as it has since been cited in various publications more than 9,000 times.
What Cuddy found most intriguing about her research was the effect nonverbal behavior had on one’s hormonal responses in as little as two minutes. Where once most believed that the way you act is derived due to the way you feel, Cuddy set out to discern whether the way you act could subsequently affect the way you feel. This inverse relationship was a novel concept since many believe you can’t fake it.
Cuddy and colleagues ran an experiment by bringing people into a lab and asking a subset of people to adopt, for two minutes, either high-power poses or low-power poses. High-power poses mirror behaviors observable in the animal kingdom. These people were asked to make themselves big, stretch out, take up space, and open up. On the other hand, those tasked with embodying low-power poses were asked to close up, wrap themselves up, and make themselves smaller.
As projected, high-powered people experienced about a 20-percent increase in testosterone, and low-powered people experience about a 10 percent decrease in testosterone. On the other hand, high-powered people experience about a 25 percent decrease in cortisol, the stress hormone, while low-powered people experience about a 15 percent increase in cortisol. As she reiterated in her lecture, “It seems that nonverbal 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.”
*As a clarification, tickets must be picked up before the event with a valid BC ID, but you cannot enter the event without the ticket. There is a limited supply, tickets are being distributed on a first-come first serve basis.
