magazine issue 2 2008 / Issue 6

The Naked Power: Understanding Nonverbal Communications of Power

• written by Thomas Schubert & Steffen Giessner

Height and Size

For instance, in an elegant study, Chen, Lee-Chai and Bargh (2001) had their participants sit either in a large professor's chair behind the professor's desk, or in a smaller guest chair across the desk. Sitting in the big chair activated cognitions of havingpower, while the small chair activated cognitions of being powerless. Thus, not only the size of one's body, but also the size of things associated with the own body communicates power.
Our own studies showed also show that this abstraction of nonverbal cues from the body can go very far. For instance, in one experiment, participants formed an impression of a manager whose relations to his subordinates was described in text and visualised in an organization chart (Giessner & Schubert, 2007). One half of the participants saw an organization chart in which the vertical line connecting the box of the manager to the lower boxes of the subordinates was rather short, while the other saw an organization chart with a rather long vertical line. (The structure of the organization chart was the same in both conditions.) The vertical difference determined the perceived power: The longer the line, the more power participants attributed to the manager. Notably, the participants in these studies were students of the business and economic sciences, who should have known that the length of the vertical line has no formalized meaning whatsoever.

In another study, participants judged the power of groups whose labels were shown on the screen (Schubert, 2005). These judgments are very fast, taking less then a second. The labels were placed either on the top or at the bottom of the screen. Even though this vertical location was totally undiagnostic and unimportant for the task, it influenced judgment times: Participants took longer to recognize the powerful groups when they were at the bottom rather than at the top, while the opposite was true for powerless groups. Such an irrelevant vertical location also influences the magnitude of attributed power (Meier, Hauser, Robinson, Kelland Friesen, & Schjeldahl, 2007; Schubert, 2005). Furthermore, schematizing a nonverbal cue in this way also works for size: When the labels of powerful groups are presented in a large font size, the groups are judged more quickly as powerful than when they are presented in a small font size, and the opposite is true for powerless groups (Schubert, Waldzus, & Seibt, 2007). These recent studies fit well with earlier findings demonstrating that actual bodily size, postures that make the body appear larger or smaller, and elevation of position are interpreted as power (Judge & Cable, 2004; Schwartz, Tesser, & Powell, 1982). The larger, the more expanded, and the higher a person is, the more powerful we think that person is. However, these former studies only looked at judgments that were made deliberately and consciously.

Angular and Round Shapes

But size and height are by no means the only stimuli that convey power when they are presented in a schematic fashion. In addition, angular and diagonal shapes such as a downward pointing triangle like a V seem to convey the meanings of potency in combination when compared to round shapes. Thus, a V is perceived to be more potent than an O. Moreover, diagonal shapes are seen as less positive than round shapes. Together, potency and negative evaluation result in the perception of threat (Aronoff, Barclay, & Stevenson, 1988; Aronoff, Woike, & Hyman, 1992).

Summary and Application

In sum, large sizes, elevation, and diagonality, as opposed to smallness, low positions and round shapes, seem to be interpreted and reacted upon as signalling power. The cited research shows that these reactions can also occur automatically and without conscious awareness.