Amy Cuddy's 2012 TED Talk keeps coming back to me.
Watch it, and if you don't quite understand the fuss, you may not have paid close enough attention to what she says around the mid-way point (around 9 minutes in). We all know that our body language communicates a great deal to others, but Cuddy's research suggests that, maybe more importantly, it also affects us. That's right, our body language can change our selves - psychologically and believe it or not, physically - in this case in the production of two key hormones, testosterone and cortisol. Testosterone communicates dominance, while cortisol sends stress messages. To ourselves. Fascinating, right? And now, the age old question I encourage my students to ask, So what? This kind of science - integrating psychology with biology - can tell us so much more about what we instinctively felt, but had no 'hard science' to back it up. The answers to So what? are endless, and only beginning to emerge. Here are some thoughts:
Oh, and welcome to my first blog post! Let me know what you think.
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