Power glower?

For the last decade we have been treated to "power poses" -- people doing full body gestures that supposedly boost their confidence -- based on spurious research that was challenged as far back as 2013. You all know that I'm against anything that encourages jackasses to behave with more jackassery, so this is an issue that cheeses me off. 

The idea, which came from a minuscule study (n=42), is this: If you stand in a power pose like a superhero for a period of time, you will gain the confidence that your body is demonstrating. For example, before a big job interview, you might stand like Superman in the elevator on the way up, arms akimbo, as if telling the villain that this evil ends right now. Then, full of confidence, you go in and wow everyone and get the job. 

Note how Marvin's power pose makes him look more manly.

But Scientific American took this theory on in 2013. In "The Dark Side of Power Posing," psych professor Jay Van Bavel wrote, 

If you are already lacking self-confidence, you might reason that the ends justify the means. Acting like a heartless jerk for a few minutes may be a small cost to pay for your dream job or a promotion, right? Although it is tempting to conclude that power posing might be a way to trick our nervous system into feeling powerful, research by Pablo Briñol, Richard Petty and Ben Wagner has shown that that this strategy might actually backfire among the people who need power the most. In a paper published prior to the power pose work described above, they examined the possibility that power posing might make people more confident in their own thoughts–even if those thoughts were negative! As predicted, Dr. Briñol and his colleagues found that power posing increased self-confidence, but only among participants who already had positive self-thoughts. In contrast, power posing had exactly the opposite effect on people who had negative self-thoughts. In fact, it actually decreased their self-confidence as potential professionals. In other words, power posing backfired among half the participants. 

I think it would decrease my self-confidence because I would feel like an idiot.

Here are a couple of other problems I've had with this whole business:

1) Superman can get away with standing in a power pose because he is freaking Superman. Meanwhile, in reality, people really getting into a fight don't stand around waiting to be pummeled. They adopt postures to attack or defend, not stand straight up like a punching bag, which is what they would become in short order.

2) It's mostly used after the fact by assholes to rub their opponents' noses in the dirt, not to show confidence in an event beforehand. Noted America-hater Megan Rapinoe, grown rich playing a child's game like so many other creeps, likes to use a "power pose" after scoring a goal, not before doing so, when it would be foolish. In a lot of other sports, perhaps even in women's soccer back in the seventies, such behavior would have earned her an elbow to the mouth. Part of the reason we have so much showboating in sports now is that the policing of this kind of behavior has been heavily penalized. I miss the days when a showboater could expect a pitch to the head, a poke in the eye, or a stick to the solar plexus. Nobody likes an asshole.   

So those are my thoughts, and I welcome your agreement or disagreement, but don't go making a silly pose before we argue, or I will take your picture and turn it into a meme.