Power Posing, Honestly: What Still Holds Up

You've probably heard the advice. Before a big interview, duck into a bathroom, plant your feet, put your hands on your hips like Wonder Woman, and hold it for two minutes. Supposedly your testosterone goes up, your cortisol drops, and you stride out chemically transformed into a confident person.

It's a great story. It became one of the most-watched TED talks of all time. And a big chunk of it didn't survive contact with follow-up research. Let me give you the honest version, because the honest version is still useful.

What the Original Claim Said

In 2010, Amy Cuddy and colleagues published a study proposing that "high-power poses," open, expansive body positions, held for a couple of minutes, would cause real hormonal changes. More testosterone, the dominance hormone. Less cortisol, the stress hormone. Plus a greater appetite for risk.

The 2012 TED talk turned it into a phenomenon. "Fake it till you become it." Millions of people have struck a superhero pose in a bathroom since. The pitch was bold: change your body, change your body chemistry, change your outcomes.

What Happened Next

Then came the part science is supposed to do. Other researchers tried to reproduce the findings, and the hormonal effects fell apart.

A large 2015 replication with far more participants found no significant hormonal changes from power posing. None. The testosterone-and-cortisol story just didn't hold up.

The most striking part: in 2016, Dana Carney, the first author on the original 2010 paper, publicly disavowed the effect. She wrote a statement saying she no longer believed power posing produced real physiological or behavioral benefits, and laid out concerns about the original methods. When the person who ran the original study tells you she doesn't buy it anymore, you listen.

So if anyone still tells you power posing will spike your testosterone before an interview, they're a decade behind the evidence. That specific claim is dead.

But Here's What Survived

This is where it gets interesting, and where a lot of "power posing is debunked" takes go too far.

One thing did hold up across the replications: the subjective feeling of power. People who stood in an open, expansive posture reported feeling more confident and more powerful than people who scrunched into a small, closed one. That effect is fairly robust. It just isn't caused by a hormone surge, and it doesn't reliably change your actual performance in measurable ways.

Even Cuddy herself, in later work, leaned toward calling it "postural feedback" and focusing on the felt confidence rather than the hormones.

So the accurate statement is: power posing won't rewire your endocrine system, but standing tall and open can genuinely make you feel a bit more confident. And how you feel walking into a room isn't nothing.

Why Posture Still Matters for an Interview

Think about what closed, shrunken body language does. When you're anxious, you tend to collapse, hunched shoulders, arms crossed, head down, taking up as little space as possible. Your body is signaling threat, to others and back to yourself.

Deliberately doing the opposite, shoulders back, chest open, feet planted, chin level, interrupts that. You don't need a two-minute Wonder Woman hold in a bathroom stall to get the benefit. You just need to not fold in on yourself.

And it works in real time during the interview. Sit up. Uncross your arms. Plant both feet. Take up your fair share of the chair. It reads as confident to the interviewer, and the posture feeds a little confidence back to you. That loop is real even though the hormone story wasn't.

The Honest How-To

Skip the bathroom superhero pose if it feels silly, the magic wasn't in it anyway. Instead:

Before you walk in, stand up straight and roll your shoulders back. Get out of the anxious hunch.

Notice your posture during the interview. Anxiety pulls you smaller. Gently correct it. Open chest, level head, grounded feet.

Pair it with the stuff that actually moves the needle: a long exhale to settle your body, a reframe to point your nerves. Posture is the supporting cast, not the star.

The Takeaway

Power posing is a useful case study in taking science honestly. The flashy claim, "change your posture, change your hormones", didn't replicate, and the original author walked it back. That part deserved the skepticism it got.

But the quieter finding, open posture helps you feel more confident, is real and worth using. Just don't expect a chemical miracle. Expect a small, honest nudge in the right direction. Sometimes that's exactly enough.