Source: PNAS / Credit: Vacharkulksemsuk et al.

There were 2 recent episodes in the NPR Invisibilia series that tell some interesting stories illustrating the power of transforming oneself through outward actions – who we hang out with, what our body language is, or how we dress. The first episode, “Outside in” has this as its starting point: “There’s a popular idea out there that you can change from the outside in. Power posing. Fake it ’til you make it. If you just assume the pose, inner transformation will follow.” One story shows how acting like a celebrity in order to ridicule US celebrity culture (having a “posse” following you around, driving up to a venue in a limousine, etc.) actually created the desire for fame. Another recounted a story from Rwanda in which an inexperienced female university debate team were inspired by Amy Cuddy’s TED talk on power posing, eventually gaining enough confidence to overcome both social prejudice against women in that role and their own uncertainty whether they belonged in the competition.

The second episode is entitled “The Secret Emotional Life of Clothes”. One of the stories is a portrait of a famous tailor, Marin Greenfield, who makes clothes for US presidents and many celebrities. According to the story, Greenfield “learned how to sew when the SS put him to work in the tailor shop at Auschwitz, where he did an amazing thing. After he ripped the shirt of a Nazi officer, and took a beating for it, Martin decided to take the shirt for himself. No other prisoners had a shirt under their uniform but he kept his, throughout the rest of the war. We explore whether this one shirt saved his life by making him feel more like himself.” It’s an amazing story. An especially dramatic episode was the first time he wore the shirt, going out of the wrong door from the prisoner barracks at Auschwitz – whether it was the shirt or the new confidence or new sense identity it brought, the Nazi guards surprisingly did not reprimand or punish him, just let him walk by. Another story talks about the power of sunglasses to transform behavior and attitudes.

The episodes remained me of a story from another NPR series, Shots, entitled “To Catch Someone On Tinder, Stretch Your Arms Wide”, about how body language in photos on dating sites make a big difference. It’s not just a question of attractiveness, but rather body language: expansive body posture leads (in the photo above, left) to better dating responses than the contracted posture (right). According to a study out of the University of California – Berkeley from Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk, the open, expansive posture conveys power and openness: “The information packing in that nonverbal behavior is social dominance, and where that person stands in a hierarchy,” The presumption, according to the article, is that “the person high in the pecking order is sexy. Alphas are scarce and in demand.” It sounds like we haven’t evolved much from caveman days, especially in our nonverbal behavior patterns.