In 2012, social psychologist Amy Cuddy walked onto the TED stage and told the world that standing like a superhero for two minutes could change your life. Her talk, "Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are," has been viewed over 70 million times. It became the second most-watched TED talk in history. The core claim was irresistible: adopt a "power pose" for two minutes, and your testosterone rises, your cortisol drops, and you become more willing to take risks. Fake confidence with your body, and your brain chemistry follows.
The idea spread everywhere. Corporate training programs adopted it. Self-help books cited it. Job seekers power-posed in bathroom stalls before interviews. It was simple, free, and backed by a Harvard researcher. What could go wrong?
Quite a lot, as it turned out.
The study and its unraveling
The original research was published in Psychological Science in 2010 by Amy Cuddy, Dana Carney, and Andy Yap. They tested 42 participants, assigning them to hold either high-power poses (feet on desk, hands behind head) or low-power poses (hunched, arms crossed) for two minutes. Saliva samples were taken before and after to measure testosterone and cortisol.
The results seemed remarkable. High-power posers showed a 20% increase in testosterone and a 25% decrease in cortisol. They also reported feeling more powerful and were more willing to gamble in a subsequent risk-taking task. The paper concluded that body posture could produce "neuroendocrine and behavioral changes."
Then the replication attempts began. In 2015, Eva Ranehill and colleagues at the University of Zurich ran a much larger study with 200 participants, more than four times the original sample. They followed the same protocol. The result: no significant effect on testosterone, no significant effect on cortisol, and no significant effect on risk-taking behavior. The subjective feeling of power increased slightly, but the hormonal claims, the headline finding that made the study famous, did not hold up.
The fallout was swift. In 2016, Dana Carney, one of the three original authors, posted a public statement on her faculty website. She wrote that she did not believe the effect was real, that she discouraged others from studying it, and that she did not teach power posing in her classes. When a co-author publicly walks away from their own paper, the scientific community pays attention.
What embodied cognition actually shows
The power pose story collapsed, but the broader field it drew from, embodied cognition, is real. Lawrence Barsalou at Emory University has published extensively on how body states influence cognitive processing. His 2008 review in the Annual Review of Psychology laid out the evidence: the body is not just a vehicle for the brain. It actively shapes how we think, remember, and perceive.
The effects are genuine but modest. Studies have shown that sitting upright improves recall of positive memories compared to slouching. Nodding your head while listening to a message increases your agreement with it. Holding a warm cup of coffee makes you rate a stranger as having a warmer personality than if you are holding an iced drink. Furrowing your brow while reading makes you judge the content as more difficult.
These findings replicate. They are small effects, not life-changing transformations, but they are consistent across multiple laboratories and methodologies. The body sends signals to the brain, and the brain incorporates those signals into its processing. This is not controversial.
The problem with the power pose narrative was not that it claimed a body-mind connection. The problem was the size of the claim. Going from "posture subtly influences mood" to "two minutes of posing rewires your hormones" was a leap the data could not support. And when the public latched onto the strong version, the nuance was lost entirely.
Why faking it can backfire
There is a deeper issue with "Fake It Till You Make It" that goes beyond the replication crisis. It concerns what happens psychologically when you perform a state you do not actually feel.
Leon Festinger described cognitive dissonance in 1957: when your behavior contradicts your beliefs, your brain experiences a form of psychological tension. Sometimes this tension resolves productively, with the belief shifting to match the behavior. But sometimes, especially when the gap between performance and reality is large, the dissonance amplifies the original insecurity.
If you already feel confident, standing tall reinforces that feeling. But if you feel deeply inadequate and you force yourself into a power pose, you may become more aware of the gap between who you are pretending to be and who you believe you actually are. The pose becomes a spotlight on the discrepancy.
This mirrors findings from Joanne Wood and colleagues at the University of Waterloo in 2009. They asked participants to repeat the affirmation "I am a lovable person." For people with high self-esteem, the affirmation produced a small positive effect. For people with low self-esteem, the people who presumably needed it most, the affirmation made them feel worse. The mechanism is the same: when the external performance contradicts the internal belief, the brain does not simply accept the new input. It pushes back.
What actually builds lasting confidence
If posing and affirmations are unreliable, what does the research support? Four approaches have strong evidence behind them.
Mastery experiences. Albert Bandura, the psychologist who developed self-efficacy theory in 1977, identified four sources of self-efficacy. The strongest, by a significant margin, is personal accomplishment. When you do something difficult and succeed, your brain updates its model of what you are capable of. No amount of posing or self-talk produces the same neurological effect as the lived experience of "I did that." This is why starting small matters. A single completed task builds more genuine confidence than an hour of visualization.
Behavioral activation. Instead of waiting to feel confident before acting, act first. Confidence is not a prerequisite for action. It is a consequence of action. The behavioral activation model, widely used in treating depression, shows that doing precedes feeling. You do not need to feel like going for a run. You need to put on your shoes and walk out the door. The feeling follows the behavior, not the other way around.
Implementation intentions. Peter Gollwitzer at New York University published research in 1999 showing that people who form specific "if-then" plans are roughly twice as likely to follow through on their goals compared to people who simply set intentions. "If I feel nervous before the presentation, then I will take three slow breaths and begin speaking" is more effective than "I will be confident during my presentation." The specificity removes the decision point from the moment of stress and pre-loads the response.
Identity-based habits. James Clear's framework asks a different question entirely. Instead of "How do I become confident?" the question becomes "What would a confident person do right now?" Then you do that thing. Each small action becomes a vote for the identity you are building. Over time, the accumulated evidence shifts your self-concept from the inside out. You are not faking anything. You are building a track record.
The honest picture
Embodied cognition is real. Your body influences your brain. Sitting up straighter probably does make you feel slightly more alert. Smiling probably does nudge your mood in a positive direction. These are small, real effects, and there is nothing wrong with using them.
But the strong version of "Fake It Till You Make It," the version that promises hormonal transformation from a two-minute pose, did not survive scientific scrutiny. And the psychological version, the idea that performing confidence will automatically create it, ignores the well-documented risks of cognitive dissonance for people who are already struggling.
Lasting confidence is not performed. It is built. One completed task at a time. One small action that proves to your brain that you are the kind of person who shows up, follows through, and handles difficulty. That evidence accumulates. And unlike a power pose, it does not wash out after two minutes.
References:
Carney, D.R., Cuddy, A.J.C., & Yap, A.J. (2010). Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1363-1368.
Ranehill, E., Dreber, A., Johannesson, M., Leiberg, S., Sul, S., & Weber, R.A. (2015). Assessing the robustness of power posing: No effect on hormones and risk tolerance in a large sample of men and women. Psychological Science, 26(5), 653-656.
Barsalou, L.W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617-645.
Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press.
Wood, J.V., Perunovic, W.Q.E., & Lee, J.W. (2009). Positive self-statements: Power for some, peril for others. Psychological Science, 20(7), 860-866.
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191-215.
Gollwitzer, P.M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493-503.