H HiPerformance CultureThe Evidence
Leadership 4 min read
Trend Breakdown
The Evidence

Does standing like a superhero really boost your confidence?

A 2010 Harvard study and a 71-million-view TED talk told the world that two minutes of expansive posture would shift your hormones. Pre-registered replication found otherwise. What the evidence does support is narrower, but real: body position changes how confident you feel in the moment.

Updated Published 3 Jun 2026 · Last reviewed 3 Jun 2026 · 5 sources
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Trend Science
Breakdown
Evidence-graded series
02What's being claimed

Adopt a dominant, expansive posture for two minutes before a high-stakes moment and your testosterone rises, cortisol falls, and you walk in already confident. A Harvard study, a book, and one of the most-watched TED talks in history told this story to tens of millions of people seeking a free, accessible edge before a job interview or presentation.

The idea rested on a plausible physiological premise. Body posture carries real biological signals: open, expansive stances are associated across primate species with dominance and status. Carney, Cuddy and Yap's 2010 laboratory study appeared to confirm this in humans, finding that 42 participants who held high-power poses for two minutes showed higher testosterone and lower cortisol than those who held constricted, low-power poses 1. The effect size was striking, the mechanism seemed coherent, and the Harvard provenance gave it credibility.

Amy Cuddy's 2012 TEDGlobal talk amplified the claim to an audience of tens of millions. She framed the poses as universally accessible: no equipment, no cost, two minutes in a bathroom before an interview. Career coaches embedded the superhero pose in pre-interview rituals worldwide. The premise, that a brief change of physical form could produce lasting physiological and behavioural change, merged seamlessly with the broader narrative of embodied cognition gaining traction in popular psychology at the time.

Origin
Carney et al. 2010
A Harvard lab study of 42 participants claimed power poses shift hormones in two minutes.
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Vector
Cuddy TEDGlobal 2012
Amy Cuddy's talk became the second most-watched TED talk, reaching 71 million viewers.
→
Spike
Interview coaching culture
Career coaches embedded the superhero pose in pre-interview rituals worldwide.
"Stand in the bathroom before your interview, feet apart, hands on hips, chin up. Two minutes. Your cortisol drops, your testosterone rises, and you walk in already winning."
— Representative of how power posing was promoted in career coaching communities worldwide
03The evidence verdict
H
HiPerformance Culture The Evidence · Trend Breakdown
Verdict

Expansive postures reliably shift how powerful you feel; the hormone claims are thoroughly debunked.

Hype Evidence
This trend lands here
Low Moderate High
Moderate confidence 5 sources cited · 1 laboratory experiment, 1 pre-registered replication, 1 p-curve analysis, 1 p-curve reanalysis, 1 meta-analysis · 2010–2022
✓

What holds up

✓
Adopting expansive postures reliably increases subjective feelings of power and confidence, a finding that survived a 128-experiment meta-analysis across cultures and genders. 5
Gold
✓
The self-perception effect is consistent across Western and Eastern cultures, multiple age groups, and both sexes. 5 4
Silver
✕

What doesn't

✕
Power posing does not raise testosterone or lower cortisol; a pre-registered replication with five times the original sample found no hormonal effect. 2 3
Gold
✕
Brief power poses have not been shown to improve real-world outcomes such as job interview performance, risk-taking propensity, or negotiation results in well-powered studies. 5
Silver
✕
The lead author of the original 2010 study publicly disavowed the hormonal findings in 2016, citing small sample, undisclosed researcher degrees of freedom, and selective data-stopping rules. 1
Bronze
04The studies
Scored on Design quality Measurement precision Causal clarity Replication value
Bronze
n=42 sample size behind a 71-million-view TED talk
Laboratory experiment · n=42
Carney, Cuddy & Yap Psychological Science · 2010
Participants held high-power poses for two minutes showed a reported 20% rise in testosterone and 25% fall in cortisol, along with higher felt power and greater gambling risk tolerance. The sample of 42 and undisclosed analytic flexibility are now recognised as critical confounds; the lead author publicly disavowed the hormonal claims in 2016.
doi:10.1177/0956797610383437 Verify ↗
Contested — Lead author Dana Carney publicly stated in 2016 that she no longer believes power pose effects are real.
Gold
0 / 3 hormonal and behavioural outcomes replicated from original
Pre-registered replication · n=200
Ranehill et al. Psychological Science · 2015
A pre-registered, five-times-larger replication held participants in power or low-power poses for six minutes and found no significant difference in testosterone, cortisol, or risk tolerance. The only effect that replicated was subjective felt power, suggesting the hormonal story was an artefact of small-sample noise.
doi:10.1177/0956797614553946 Verify ↗
Gold P-curve analysis
Simmons & Simonsohn Psychological Science · 2017
A p-curve analysis of studies cited in the 2015 Carney-Cuddy-Yap review found that the distribution of p-values was inconsistent with a true hormonal effect. The authors concluded the existing evidence was too weak to justify advocating for power posing as a life-improvement tool.
doi:10.1177/0956797616658563 Verify ↗
Contested — Cuddy et al. (2018) contested the study selection, arguing a broader corpus showed evidential value for psychological effects.
Silver
55 studies in revised p-curve vs 33 in Simmons critique
P-curve reanalysis · 55 studies
Cuddy, Schultz & Fosse Psychological Science · 2018
Applying p-curve analysis to 55 studies, Cuddy and colleagues found evidential value for postural feedback effects on emotional and behavioural outcomes, but crucially did not contest the failure to replicate hormonal effects. The paper implicitly conceded the testosterone-cortisol debate whilst defending a narrower psychological claim.
doi:10.1177/0956797617746749 Verify ↗
Contested — Critics argued the 55-study corpus included studies not designed to test expansive poses against a neutral baseline.
Gold
128 experiments, ~10,000 participants: no hormonal effect found
Pre-registered meta-analysis · 128 experiments · n approx. 10,000
Koerner et al. Psychological Bulletin · 2022
The most comprehensive synthesis to date searched 12 databases, identified 128 experiments with approximately 10,000 participants, and found robust evidence for a self-perception effect of expansive postures (feeling more powerful) but no evidence for any physiological effect: no testosterone, cortisol, heart rate, or skin-conductance changes. Behavioural effects were inconsistent and susceptible to outlier influence.
doi:10.1037/bul0000356 Verify ↗
05So what do you actually do

If you use it, frame it correctly: the evidence supports a brief posture shift for felt confidence, not a hormonal intervention.

Preparation and rehearsal produce more durable gains than postural priming.

01Stand in an open, expansive posture for two minutes before a high-stakes moment to prime your sense of confidence.
02Frame the expectation accurately: the effect is a shift in felt confidence, not a hormonal change.
03Do not expect posture to change what the other person observes or to alter your risk tolerance.
04Build durable confidence through preparation and deliberate practice rather than postural shortcuts.
06The verdict triad
Claim

The hormone origin story

Carney, Cuddy and Yap's 2010 study claimed two minutes of expansive posture raised testosterone by 20% and lowered cortisol by 25%, producing measurable hormonal confidence in a sample of 42 participants. The finding went viral before replication could occur.

Consequence

Hormones debunked, confidence survives

A pre-registered replication with 200 participants found no hormonal effect whatsoever; a 128-study meta-analysis confirmed it. The claim that power posing shifts testosterone and cortisol is not supported by the evidence. The self-perception effect, feeling more powerful, is real but modest.

Lever

Posture as psychological primer

Use an expansive posture for two minutes before a high-stakes moment to shift how confident you feel, not to alter your hormones. Pair it with preparation and rehearsal, which the evidence consistently shows produce durable performance gains rather than momentary perceptual shifts.

08What to do next
What to do next

Want to build real confidence for high-stakes moments?

The HPC Leadership Confidence Assessment maps where your actual confidence gaps lie: posture, preparation, or something deeper. Two minutes of honest answers, not superhero poses.

Take the assessment
09Share & references
Update log
3 Jun 2026First published. 5 sources reviewed.
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Bibliography · every source, resolvable
01Carney, D.R., Cuddy, A.J. & Yap, A.J. (2010). Power Posing. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1363-1368. doi:10.1177/0956797610383437 Verify ↗Bronze
02Ranehill, E., Dreber, A., Johannesson, M., Leiberg, S., Sul, S. & Weber, R.A. (2015). Assessing the Robustness of Power Posing. Psychological Science, 26(5), 653-656. doi:10.1177/0956797614553946 Verify ↗Gold
03Simmons, J.P. & Simonsohn, U. (2017). Power Posing: <i>P-</i> Curving the Evidence. Psychological Science, 28(5), 687-693. doi:10.1177/0956797616658563 Verify ↗Gold
04Cuddy, A.J.C., Schultz, S.J. & Fosse, N.E. (2018). <i>P</i> -Curving a More Comprehensive Body of Research on Postural Feedback Reveals Clear Evidential Value for Power-Posing Effects: Reply to Simmons and Simonsohn (2017). Psychological Science, 29(4), 656-666. doi:10.1177/0956797617746749 Verify ↗Silver
05Körner, R., Röseler, L., Schütz, A. & Bushman, B.J. (2022). Dominance and prestige: Meta-analytic review of experimentally induced body position effects on behavioral, self-report, and physiological dependent variables.. Psychological Bulletin, 148(1-2), 67-85. doi:10.1037/bul0000356 Verify ↗Gold
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