Victory boosts testosterone but what is less well known is that merely adopting some of the trappings of victory - faking a chest out, arms and legs spread "power posture", for instance - also boosts testosterone, Dana Carney and her colleagues from Columbia and Harvard Universities showed.
Additionally, research by Amy Cuddy and Dana Carney at Harvard University has shown that holding "power postures" for 120 seconds can create a 20percentt increase in testosterone (helping to boost confidence) and a 25percentt decrease in cortisol (reducing stress).
So next time you have a big meeting, ask yourself whether you're better off 1) as an active, fully engaged participant or 2) frantically scribbling down comprehensive notes for later use, while ignoring critical room dynamics that can turn meetings on a dime -- non-verbal cues, power postures and nuanced changes in tones of voice.
Big dividends Your article on Russia reminded me of my own government's attitude toward power ("Thieves posturing as statesmen," Fact & Comment, Sept. 6, p. 13).
That opinion, though, is not universal in Lebanon, where sentiments over the court mirror a divide in the country that predates Mr. Hariri's assassination and cuts across Lebanon's questions of identity, loyalty to foreign powers, posture toward Israel and the relative strength of Sunni and Shiite Muslims in a country of 18 religious sects.
It turns out the only beneficial result of a "power pose" is nice posture.
But Jennifer (modeled on Molière's Célimène) is also meant to be a manipulative siren of pronounced and devious intellect, able to hold her own amid posturing power-player aesthetes.
At the same time, the slippage from passion to silliness, from power to posturing, in the shift from Thief to Miami Vice is hard to avoid.
In the last two decades of his life, Nelson Mandela was celebrated as a model of how to liberate a country from the colonial yoke without succumbing to the temptation of dictatorial power and anti-capitalist posturing.
And while the political tough guy posturing for power has not even come close to winning the "war on drugs," it has destroyed judicial independence by taking away judges' sentencing discretion and handing it over to prosecutors.
