Posture (psychology)

For other uses, see Posture.
For posture in a physical context, see Human positions.
Young Girl Holding a Letter, circa 1665

In humans, posture can provide a significant amount of important information through nonverbal communication. Psychological studies have also demonstrated the effects of body posture on emotions. This research can be traced back to Charles Darwin's studies of emotion and movement in humans and animals.[1] Currently, many studies have shown that certain patterns of body movements are indicative of specific emotions.[2][3] Researchers studied sign language and found that even non-sign language users can determine emotions from only hand movements.[4] Another example is the fact that anger is characterized by forward whole body movement.[5] The theories that guide research in this field are the self-validation or perception theory and the embodied emotion theory.[5][6][7]

  • Self-validation theory is when a participant's posture has a significant effect on their self-evaluation of their emotions. An example of this is an experiment where participants had to think and then write positive qualities of themselves in a confident or doubtful posture.[6] Participants then had to self-evaluate on how good a job candidate, interviewee, performer, and how satisfied they would be as an employee. Mood and confidence level were also measured. Results from this study proved in favor of the self-validation theory. Participants' attitudes in the confident but not doubtful posture significantly affected their self-reported attitudes. A similar study showed that participants who were placed in a hunched posture reported were more likely to feel stressed compared to participants who assumed a relaxed position.[7]
  • Embodied emotion theory is the idea that mental events can be represented by states of the body.[5] In a study showing embodied emotion, participants were primed with concepts of pride and disappointment by a word generation task. Researchers hypothesized there would be an observable change in participants' posture based on the word they were primed with. This hypothesis was confirmed for the disappointment prime because participants were more likely to decrease in their vertical height or show slumping behavior.[5]
  1. ^ Munger, Margaret P., ed. (2003). The history of psychology : fundamental questions. New York, N.Y [etc.]: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-515154-1.
  2. ^ Dael, Nele; Mortillaro, Marcello; Scherer, Klaus R. (2011). "Emotion expression in body action and posture". Emotion. 12 (5): 1085–1101. doi:10.1037/a0025737. PMID 22059517. S2CID 16366687.
  3. ^ Montepare, Joann; Koff, Elissa; Zaitchik, Deborah; Albert, Marilyn (1999). "The Use of Body Movements and Gestures as Cues to Emotions in Younger and Older Adults". Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. 23 (2): 133–152. doi:10.1023/A:1021435526134. S2CID 142904808.
  4. ^ Rossberg-Gempton, Irene; Gary Poole (1993). "The effect of open and closed posture on pleasant and unpleasant emotions". The Arts in Psychotherapy. 20: 75–82. doi:10.1016/0197-4556(93)90034-Y.
  5. ^ a b c d Oosterwijk, Suzanne; Rotteveel, Mark; Fischer, Agneta H.; Hess, Ursula (2009). "Embodied emotion concepts: how generating words about pride and disappointment influences posture". European Journal of Social Psychology. 39 (3): 457–466. doi:10.1002/ejsp.584.
  6. ^ a b Briñol, Pablo; Petty, Richard E.; Wagner, Benjamin (2009). "Body posture effects on self-evaluation: A self-validation approach". European Journal of Social Psychology. 39 (6): 1053–1064. doi:10.1002/ejsp.607.
  7. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Riskind was invoked but never defined (see the help page).