Why You Need to Sit up Straight

In 2010, Amy Cuddy and two other authors published a research study that suggested that if you stood confidently, with your hands on your hips like Wonder Woman, you would actually transform your mental state by increasing testosterone and decreasing cortisol. Her TED talk of 2012, “Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are,” which has gained more than 77 million views so far, took the idea a little further, saying that while body language indicates to other people how we feel, specifically how powerful we seem, our own body language also suggests to ourselves how powerful we are. She asked the question, could you fake it until you make it? And the talk concludes with a touching story about, as Amy says, “faking it until you become it.”

That initial widespread notice brought about a reaction – other researchers failed to find the same result in terms of hormonal changes. Everyone did agree, however, if standing confidently made you feel more confident, there was nothing wrong with “faking it until you made it – or became it.”

Recently, a new studied published in the British Journal of Psychology cleverly avoids the issues with the original Cuddy et al study and offers insight into how our bodies affect our minds – and why we should care about that.

Some 200 subjects were instructed to play a risk-taking game on a tablet. The tablet was positioned so that some of the subjects had to sit up straight to play the game and some had to slouch. None of them knew that they were being tested on their body language.

The results were striking. The subjects that slouched felt less enthusiastic and took less-effective risks – they performed more poorly – than the subjects taking an upright posture. The research subjects with upright postures engaged in more successful play, taking more effective risks.

In the 19^th century, the great psychologist William James suggested a similar idea. We smile when we are happy, as a result of that happiness, he noted, but if we push ourselves to smile when we are not happy, that act itself will cause us to feel happier. Experienced performers know this, developing individual rituals to get themselves into enough of a high-energy state to deliver a great performance, whether it’s listening to upbeat music (and dancing to it), bouncing on a trampoline, or fist-pumping backstage to embrace the energy. The physical state reflects our mental state – and the reverse is also true. You can – and should – use this insight to elevate your presence when preparing for an important presentation, meeting, or negotiation.

Recently I was coaching a leader getting ready for a high-stakes presentation to his board. He knew his speech cold; he had practiced the delivery so that it sounded confident and assured. He had thought about his goals for the presentation with the audience in front of him. But in what would have been the final rehearsal, I noticed that he had a slight stoop in his posture. His shoulders were slight rounded, and as a result, he wasn’t taking up his full height.

I coached him to stand up straight, sounding a little like my grandmother instructing me many years ago as a boy, and immediately several things happened. He was able to enter the room more confidently and his voice had more energy in it. But most importantly, he reported that he felt more confident. His body language was instructing himself and thus would also signal that confidence and authority to his audience when the moment came.

When you get your moment on the stage, make sure that you are standing as tall as you can, taking up all the space with all the confidence you are entitled to. That little shift in body language will win with your audience – and with you.

(Wainio-Theberge & Armony, British Journal of Psychology, 2026)