The power pose became the sun salutation for the professional woman on the cusp of leaning in. In the years after the talk, Cuddy became a sought-after speaker, a quasi celebrity and, eventually, the author of a best-selling book, “Presence,” in 2015. The video is now TED’s second-most popular, having been seen, to date, by some 43 million viewers. “Don’t fake it till you make it - fake it till you become it,” she told the audience, before urging them to share the science of power posing with others who might need that boost: “It can significantly change the outcomes of their life.” She really wanted the audience members to ace their job interviews, to find confidence in the face of nerves, and she had a plan, a science-supported life hack, for how to do it: the power pose. In the talk, Cuddy was commanding she was also confessional, telegenic, empathetic. The study impressed not only Cuddy’s colleagues - it was published in the prestigious journal Psychological Science - but also CNN, Oprah magazine and, inevitably, someone at the TED conference, which invited Cuddy to speak in 2012. Even more compelling than that, to many of her peers, was that the research measured actual physiological change as a result of the poses: The subjects’ testosterone levels went up, and their cortisol levels, which are associated with stress, went down. And hers seemed to embody a divide that had characterized her life in the last couple of years, a sense of two selves, one highly sensitive, the other more confident, even skilled in the art of conveying that confidence.Ĭuddy became famous in her field for a 2010 study about the effects of “power poses.” The study found that subjects who were directed to stand or sit in certain positions - legs astride, or feet up on a desk - reported stronger “feelings of power” after posing than they did before.

That visual might have escaped me altogether, except that Cuddy, a social psychologist, is best known to the public for her work on body language. She was slightly hunched over, and yet her right arm, long and lean - she danced for many years - gesticulated freely and expressively, so that the contrast gave the impression of someone in a conflicted emotional state, someone both wanting to tell her story and unsure about doing so. As she talked about her life in recent years, my attention kept drifting to her left arm, which she had trapped underneath her right leg, which crossed the left. Cuddy was, at the time, officially on the faculty at Harvard Business School, but she was taking a temporary leave, her small box of an office filled with boxes.

I first met Amy Cuddy in January, soon after she moved into a new office at the Harvard School of Public Health.

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