Friend and Foe: When to Cooperate, When to Compete, and How to Succeed at Both by Adam Galinsky, Maurice Schweitzer
Authors: Adam Galinsky, Maurice Schweitzer
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postures—your body is expanding out and taking up space. Now let’s try a different posture. Sit on the edge of a chair, hunch your shoulders forward, and put your hands under your legs. How do you feel in this position? In this posture your body is constricted and confined. In which one did you feel more powerful?
Expansive postures are intimately tied to power. Indeed, dominant individuals across species often expand their postures and take up more space: Northern elephant seals rise up to ward off competitors for mating, the peacock expands its tail to signal its authority, the chimpanzee puffs out its chest by holding its breath to assert its power. Similarly, we’ve all witnessed how the executive sits back in their oversized chair or stands tall before the board to signal and assert who is in charge.
But these postures can be used to help people
feel
like they have more power. Dana found that simply putting people into one of these expansive postures (which she aptly named a power pose), like sitting back in a chair, standing up straight like Wonder Woman or Superman, or leaning forward on a desk like a boss barking orders, made people feel more powerful.
These are radically new ways of thinking about power. We intuitively know that how we feel influences our physical behavior—that when we feel proud, we stand up a little straighter, that when we feel strong, we grasp someone’s handshake a little tighter, etc. But what this research shows is that this relationship also works in reverse; our physical behavior also influences how we feel. In other words, just as we can start a manual transmission car by rolling it down the street, putting the car in gear, and releasing the clutch, we can “roll start” feeling powerful by directing our body in a high-power “gear.”
Some of our most recent research shows that even music can produce feelings of power. In a project led by Dennis Hsu of Northwestern University, we found that songs with strong, powerful beats and bass sounds—like “We Will Rock You” by Queen, “Get Ready for This” by 2 Unlimited, and “In Da Club” by 50 Cent—made people feel and act more powerfully. This may explain why so many athletes, from Colin Kaepernick in football to Serena Williams in tennis, walk into the stadium wearing headphones. Or why, the season after the Miami Heat lost in the NBA finals to the Dallas Mavericks, LeBron James prepared for a rematch by blasting Wu-Tang Clan’s “Bring the Pain” (with its lyrics of “Basically, can’t fuck with me”) through the locker room. That night, Miami routed Dallas.
Any of these methods—recalling an experience with power, taking on a powerful posture, listening to powerful music—can increase your sense of power. The key is finding the one that works for you. Personally, we favor the recall task. What is nice about recalling an experience when you had power is that
everyone
has had such an experience—anyone can relive those feelings and produce a long-lasting and authentic sense of power. The power of recall also has the most scientific evidence behind it, with hundreds of studies documenting its effects. But again, you can use whichever route—memories, poses, or music—that best helps you kick-start your sense of power.
So now we know what power is, and how to feel more of it. We next turn to how this feeling of power fundamentally alters how we interact with our friends and our foes.
Speeding Down the Highway with Samson’s Hair Blowing in the Wind
We first became interested in power when our collaborator Deb Gruenfeld, a professor at Stanford University, stepped on a plane in the late 1990s. As she settled into her seat, a man in a suit sat down next to her. The overhead fan was blowing in his face, and he immediately took action to remedy the annoying situation. Rather than simply turn the fan off, however, he redirected it right into Deb’s face. In response, Deb just sat there, doing nothing,
Expansive postures are intimately tied to power. Indeed, dominant individuals across species often expand their postures and take up more space: Northern elephant seals rise up to ward off competitors for mating, the peacock expands its tail to signal its authority, the chimpanzee puffs out its chest by holding its breath to assert its power. Similarly, we’ve all witnessed how the executive sits back in their oversized chair or stands tall before the board to signal and assert who is in charge.
But these postures can be used to help people
feel
like they have more power. Dana found that simply putting people into one of these expansive postures (which she aptly named a power pose), like sitting back in a chair, standing up straight like Wonder Woman or Superman, or leaning forward on a desk like a boss barking orders, made people feel more powerful.
These are radically new ways of thinking about power. We intuitively know that how we feel influences our physical behavior—that when we feel proud, we stand up a little straighter, that when we feel strong, we grasp someone’s handshake a little tighter, etc. But what this research shows is that this relationship also works in reverse; our physical behavior also influences how we feel. In other words, just as we can start a manual transmission car by rolling it down the street, putting the car in gear, and releasing the clutch, we can “roll start” feeling powerful by directing our body in a high-power “gear.”
Some of our most recent research shows that even music can produce feelings of power. In a project led by Dennis Hsu of Northwestern University, we found that songs with strong, powerful beats and bass sounds—like “We Will Rock You” by Queen, “Get Ready for This” by 2 Unlimited, and “In Da Club” by 50 Cent—made people feel and act more powerfully. This may explain why so many athletes, from Colin Kaepernick in football to Serena Williams in tennis, walk into the stadium wearing headphones. Or why, the season after the Miami Heat lost in the NBA finals to the Dallas Mavericks, LeBron James prepared for a rematch by blasting Wu-Tang Clan’s “Bring the Pain” (with its lyrics of “Basically, can’t fuck with me”) through the locker room. That night, Miami routed Dallas.
Any of these methods—recalling an experience with power, taking on a powerful posture, listening to powerful music—can increase your sense of power. The key is finding the one that works for you. Personally, we favor the recall task. What is nice about recalling an experience when you had power is that
everyone
has had such an experience—anyone can relive those feelings and produce a long-lasting and authentic sense of power. The power of recall also has the most scientific evidence behind it, with hundreds of studies documenting its effects. But again, you can use whichever route—memories, poses, or music—that best helps you kick-start your sense of power.
So now we know what power is, and how to feel more of it. We next turn to how this feeling of power fundamentally alters how we interact with our friends and our foes.
Speeding Down the Highway with Samson’s Hair Blowing in the Wind
We first became interested in power when our collaborator Deb Gruenfeld, a professor at Stanford University, stepped on a plane in the late 1990s. As she settled into her seat, a man in a suit sat down next to her. The overhead fan was blowing in his face, and he immediately took action to remedy the annoying situation. Rather than simply turn the fan off, however, he redirected it right into Deb’s face. In response, Deb just sat there, doing nothing,
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