Upright and left out: Posture moderates the effects of social exclusion on mood and threats to basic needs

Abstract

Adopting a powerful posture leads individuals to feel more confident and dominant. Social exclusion can strongly impact individuals' mood and basic social needs. The current research combines these bodies of research, investigating the effects of dominant and submissive poses on responses to social exclusion and inclusion. In two experiments, participants held a slouching or upright pose and were either socially included or excluded using the Cyberball social exclusion manipulation. Social exclusion only affected participants' mood when individuals took a powerful posture: Excluded participants in powerful postures had more negative mood after exclusion than included power‐posing participants, but effects of exclusion and inclusion did not differ among submissive‐posing participants (Experiments 1 and 2). Similarly, it was also found that social exclusion affected basic needs only when participants' adopted powerful poses (Experiment 2). Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Dominance or prestige: A review of the effects of power poses and other body postures

“…For example, when participants adopted UPs (instead of SPs) while receiving success feedback, they experienced more pride (Stepper & Strack, 1993). Similarly, Welker, Oberleitner, Cain, and Carré (2013) showed that for people in UPs, their mood was worse when they were socially excluded than when they were socially included, whereas no such effect was observed for people in SPs.…”

Expansive and Contractive Postures and Movement: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Motor Displays on Affective and Behavioral Responses

“…For instance, walking with an expansive posture may cause powerful feelings such as anger or pride but also negative affect such as sadness depending on the particular context (e.g., Cesario & McDonald, 2013). Indeed, studies have found that individuals adopting expansive postures report more negative mood when socially excluded (Welker et al, 2013) and higher depression scores when experiencing failure (Riskind, 1984). Accordingly, it has been proposed that the context may moderate the effects of displays on behavior (Cesario & McDonald, 2013).…”

“…We term these expansive displays because the body is posed in a way that makes it appear taller and wider than when the body posture is neutral. The second set of motor displays covers withdrawal displays, including submissive (e.g., Welker, Oberleitner, Cain, & Carré, 2013), sad or fearful (e.g., Michalak et al, 2015;Shafir, Taylor, Atkinson, Langenecker, & Zubieta, 2013), closed (e.g., Latu et al, 2017), slouched (e.g., Ceunen, Zaman, Vlaeyen, Dankaerts, & Van Diest, 2014, and powerless displays (e.g., Bailey, LaFrance, & Dovidio, 2017). These displays we term contractive displays because the body is posed in a way that makes it appear shorter and smaller than when the body posture is neutral.…”

A Negative Effect of a Contractive Pose is not Evidence for the Positive Effect of an Expansive Pose: Comment on Cuddy, Schultz, and Fosse (2018)

“…A similar set of problems is also evident for the set of studies that were included in the p-curve analysis of EASE variables. That is, thirteen of sixteen studies reported a significant effect of postural manipulation on EASE variables but ten of these studies (described in Brinol, Petty, & Wegener, 2009;Kozak, Roberts & Patterson, 2014;Nair, Sagar, Sollers, Consedine, & Broadbent, 2015;Peper, Booiman, Lin, & Harvey, 2016;Riskind, 1983;Riskind, 1984;Teh et al, 2016;Veenstra, Schneider, & Koole., 2017 [Experiment 2], Welker, Oberleitner, Cain & Carre, 2013;Wilson & Peper, 2004) all failed to include either a control group or baseline measurements on the EASE variables. Only three of the thirteen studies were designed in a way that allows an inference to be drawn about the effect of power posing relative to a neutral posture on EASE variables.…”