Basic body language might be all you need to spot a master manipulator in just seconds, a new study has revealed.
Psychologists conducted five separate studies analyzing a total of 608 subjects, finding a consistent link between those who frequently stand up straight in open expansive poses and ‘antisocial and manipulative personality traits.’
The discovery adds a new twist to the debate over the ‘power pose,’ a wide-legged, chest-out posture once believed to confer a confidence boost on those who adopt it.
‘We were surprised that antisocial traits were most consistently associated with posture,’ the study authors said, ‘rather than depression and negative emotion.’
The team suspects the preference may reflect an unconscious ‘use of intimidation in order to improve one’s access to resources in the environment at the expense of others.’
‘Previous studies in clinical depression have found more hunched postures in depressed patients,’ the researchers from McGill University explained.
‘And while we saw some evidence for that in our data,’ they noted, ‘antisocial traits were far more consistent.’
Researchers suspects that the preference for a tall posture may reflect an unconscious ‘use of intimidation in order to improve one’s access to resources in the environment at the expense of others’
The first study asked subjects to fill out a personality survey and submit four photos of their natural stance from various angles: front, back, left and right.
The photos were then analyzed via machine-learning tool called OpenPOSE, which identified key body points — the placement or angle of the neck, eye-line, shoulders, spine, and hip — to put measurable numbers to their posture.
The second study double-checked the connections found, while the third asked 104 participants to adopt dominant and submissive poses on purpose, based on their own subjective interpretation, to even further double check.
By this point, the team was finding that participants who naturally adopted a ‘power pose’ were scoring higher on having a ‘social dominance’ orientation.
These test subject also scored higher for ‘primary’ or more likely genetic psychopathy, while also scoring lower on both empathy and anger control.
‘The usual caveat in this kind of research is the sample,’ Wainio-Theberge and Dr Armony added. ‘We studied young adults, most of whom were university students and the vast majority of whom self-identified as women.’
‘While we recently extended this to a wider age range, up to 80 years old,’ as they told PsyPost, ‘there’s a lot of variability in the population at large that we’re not capturing in this study.’
McGill University psychologists tracked their test subjects to find a connection between antisocial or psychopathic traits (x-axis above) and each subject’s posture (y-axis above)
Photos of the studies’ subjects were analyzed via machine-learning tool called OpenPOSE, which identified key body points (shown in figure d, above) and calculated angles to put measurable numbers to their posture, like angles of neck, shoulder, spine, and hip placement
The team’s fourth study added a physiological and neurological element, recording the muscle activity related to two key neck muscles on 129 subjects.
A surface electromyography (EMG) device was used to track one muscle used in head and neck movement, the sternocleidomastoid, and another that helps stabilize the shoulders and neck, the upper trapezius.
The McGill team found that the head and neck connector, sternocleidomastoid, played a much stronger role in what is commonly thought of as a ‘dominant’ posture.
Their fifth and final study, published with the rest in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology this past November, attempted to hunt for links between posture other related traits, ‘Machiavellianism [manipulation], narcissism, and aggression.’
These results reinforced the posture-personality connection, revealing that more erect postures tracked with participants who had a greater desire for power and a willingness to pursue manipulative or aggressive strategies to get what they want.
But the researchers noted that this shouldn’t be interpreted as an excuse to slouch.
‘People should NOT take away that standing upright will change your personality (for better or for worse),’ they said.
‘We observed a correlation between body posture and personality and therefore cannot make inferences about causality,’ they explained.
University of Massachusetts Amherst psychologist Dr Susan Krauss Whitbourne, only reviewed the McGill study, acknowledged that there were still some takeaways for the average person from this research.
‘A person who seems to want to use their body to intimidate you (even if they don’t totally succeed),’ she wrote in Psychology Today, ‘seems like a good person to stay away from.’
