Your Body Language Shapes Who Yo

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 ['vɝsəs] the powerless look like? So powerful people tend to be, not surprisingly,more assertive [ə'sɝtɪv] 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 [tɛ'stɑstəron], which is the dominance ['dɔmɪnəns] hormone,and cortisol ['kɔrtɪsɑl], which is the stress hormone. So what we find is that high-power alpha males in primate hierarchies ['haɪərɑrkɪz] 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, okay, you take a role change, what happens if you do that at a really minimal level, like this tiny manipulation [mə,nɪpjʊ'leʃən], 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."