Skip the hormonal "power pose" promises
Use posture for felt confidence, but don’t believe it’s changing your hormones.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Use posture for felt confidence, but don’t believe it’s changing your hormones.
- Why it works: The original power-posing claim was that two minutes of expansive poses raised testosterone, lowered cortisol, and increased risk-taking. The honest mechanism is much narrower: any benefit comes from self-perception and felt confidence (embodied cognition), not endocrine change. Knowing this keeps you from leaning on an effect that isn’t real and lets you use the part that is.
- Evidence: Plausible mechanism, limited direct outcome data.
- Avoid: Believing a two-minute pose will physiologically transform you, then feeling cheated when it doesn’t — the honest, smaller felt-confidence effect is the part to actually use.
Why it works
The original power-posing claim was that two minutes of expansive poses raised testosterone, lowered cortisol, and increased risk-taking. The honest mechanism is much narrower: any benefit comes from self-perception and felt confidence (embodied cognition), not endocrine change. Knowing this keeps you from leaning on an effect that isn’t real and lets you use the part that is.
How to do it
- 1If an expansive stance helps you feel ready before a high-stakes moment, use it — for the felt effect.
- 2Don’t count on it to change your hormones or make you take bigger risks.
- 3Pair it with substance — preparation and rehearsal — rather than treating the pose as the work.
What the evidence says
MechanisticThe original power-posing hormonal and risk-taking effects largely failed to replicate in a larger, pre-registered study; later work supports only a modest "felt power" / self-report effect.
Honest caveat: Even one of the original authors later distanced herself from the hormonal claims while maintaining the felt-confidence effect may exist. Treat strong physiological claims as unsupported.
- — Ranehill et al. (2015), failed replication of power posing’s hormonal and behavioral effects, Psychological Science
Common mistake
Believing a two-minute pose will physiologically transform you, then feeling cheated when it doesn’t — the honest, smaller felt-confidence effect is the part to actually use.
IX Coach is built to separate the supported part of a popular technique from the hype, so you invest in what actually helps instead of a debunked promise.
Practice this with IX Coach →