In 2012 Amy Cuddy tells a TED audience that two minutes of open posture rewires your hormones. Three years later a bigger study finds nothing, and the original lead author publicly abandons her own finding. The question buried under that wreckage finally gets asked properly.
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- Carney, Cuddy and Yap's 2010 power posing study and what it actually claimed
- Eva Ranehill's 2015 replication in Psychological Science and why the hormone effects vanished
- Dana Carney's 2016 statement abandoning power pose effects
- The replication crisis in psychology and what it repaired
- Demand characteristics, and why telling someone to pose invalidates the test
- Veenstra, Schneider and Koole on stooped posture, mood recovery and negative thoughts
- Interoception, and how your brain reads your body as live evidence
- The 2026 McGill study by Wainio-Theberge and Armony in the British Journal of Psychology
- Manipulating posture through desk height instead of instruction
- Neck angle measured objectively from video tracking software
- Upright posture, smarter risk-taking on the balloon task, and higher pride
- The protection driver inside the BrainWise framework
- Workplace ergonomics as a quiet input to your mood and your decisions
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00:00 The Power Pose Origin Story
02:14 Welcome To My BrainWise Coach
02:57 What Carney Cuddy And Yap Claimed
04:34 Why The Power Pose Spread
05:35 The 2015 Replication That Failed
06:38 Dana Carney Retracts Her Finding
07:48 The Question That Survived The Collapse
08:38 The Demand Characteristics Problem Explained
09:35 Veenstra Posture And Mood Recovery
11:22 Interoception And Body Brain Signals
12:19 The McGill Study Design Explained
13:59 Measuring Neck Angle From Video
15:31 Upright Posture And Better Risk
16:57 Protection Driver And BrainWise Framework
17:54 Workplace Ergonomics Field Guide
18:48 Why Science Correcting Itself Matters
19:44 Close And Final Takeaway
- Carney, D. R., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Yap, A. J. (2010). Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1363–1368. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610383437
- Cuddy, A. (2012). Your body language may shape who you are. TEDGlobal 2012. https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_may_shape_who_you_are
- Ranehill, E., Dreber, A., Johannesson, M., Leiberg, S., Sul, S., & Weber, R. A. (2015). Assessing the robustness of power posing: No effect on hormones and risk tolerance in a large sample of men and women. Psychological Science, 26(5), 653–656. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614553946
- Carney, D. R. (2016). My position on "Power Poses." Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/dana_carney/pdf_my%20position%20on%20power%20poses.pdf
- Veenstra, L., Schneider, I. K., & Koole, S. L. (2017). Embodied mood regulation: The impact of body posture on mood recovery, negative thoughts, and mood-congruent recall. Cognition and Emotion, 31(7), 1361–1376. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2016.1225003
- Wainio-Theberge, S., & Armony, J. (2026). Manipulating posture implicitly through environmental constraints influences mood and risk-taking behaviour. British Journal of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.70083
