I don't remember the first time I came across the TED Talk on power poses, but I admit to having thought about it recurrently in relevant life situations ever since, prepping before exams or interviews or presentations by striking an expansive stance. I even directed my students in Expository Writing to stand up before their high-stakes in-class writing exam and pose confidently before sitting down to begin. The claims seemed a little flashy, but I figured there was no harm done. And maybe even if the effect itself is overstated, the placebo effect of doing the poses for the purposes of confidence building might increase confidence through self-determination. So the special issue of Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology let the wind out of my sails a bit. Interestingly, the issue is composed of preregistered contributions (which I hadn't heard of before), where the authors proposed a study to be included and were peer-reviewed before ever beginning the research. Being committed to the journal before the experiment meant that null results wouldn't go in the file drawer. And null results were a lot of what was found. Womp womp...
The one that especially caught my eye was Keller, Johnson, and Harder (2017, pp.107-122) on whether knowing the purpose of power poses (as I did when attempting them and as my Expos students did, because I told them why I was making them stand funny before their writing test) changes the outcome--either for the worse or the better. And they found it did neither. And none of the poses (power or otherwise) impacted the results either. Posing confidently didn't significantly impact behavior, and even being told "this pose will make you more confident" didn't make a difference relative to the people who weren't told the purpose of the poses. Placebo fail. I wonder if more journals will move to the preregistration special issue format. There are some areas within bilingualism research that could probably benefit from this approach. In the meantime, I guess I won't bother advising my students to strike a power pose before exams. But for myself (long before learning of the null literature), the act of standing or sitting expansively has made me chuckle, enough to ease my nerves, which might be benefit enough not to scrap the practice entirely.
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AuthorThis is a place where I record thoughts on second language research and pedagogical theory Archives
June 2019
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