Could a woman be superman? Gender and the embodiment of power postures

Abstract

ABSTRACTPhysical postures can instill a sense of power in the self as well as communicate power to others. Recent work indicates that a target’s gender interferes with the rapid identification of power postures; men in low-power postures and women in high-power postures slow viewers’ identification. We hypothesized that how long people enact low and high-power postures will vary as a function of their own gender and the gender of the person modeling the posture. We presented male and female participants with images of male and female models in low and high-power postures and asked them to enact the postures for an unspecific duration. We measured enacted duration, risky behavior, and felt power. The preregistered hypothesis that posture condition and participant gender would interact was not supported. Instead, overall, participants enacted the high-power postures longer than the low-power posture. Supporting the preregistered hypothesis that target gender would interact with posture condition and participant gender, only male participants’ time in the postures was sensitive to posture and model gender combinations. Consistent with theories proposing greater rigidity of male gender roles, male participants enacted the low-power postures for the least amount of time when duplicating a female model in a low-power posture. Finally, we did not strongly replicate prior work, but found some support that enacting high-power postures led to riskier behavior and more felt power for some aspects of the sample in exploratory analyses.