Size or Openness: Expansive but Closed Body Posture Increases Submissive Behavior

Expansive body posture is the most commonly studied and widely described in psychological literature. For many years, expansive posture was universally identified as a pose of power, but more recent research has revealed that the link between expansive posture and power may be moderated by gender, culture or even contextual cues. Our findings show that with little variation added to expansive posture it does not necessarily lead to the sense of power, and may actually trigger the opposite effect: a feeling of submissiveness. In three studies, persons assuming their body in a standing-at-attention posture were perceived as being more obedient (Experiment 1), thus participants who expanded their body in a standing-at-attention manner (although actually doing a non-obedient unrelated task) displayed greater compliance to requests (Experiment 2) and declared greater submissiveness toward social norms (Experiment 3). We discuss how the cultural and interpersonal context imprinted in specific body posture can modify the feedback of innate and universal body states.