Sitting up straight may improve mood and decision-making

A new study from McGill University suggests that body posture can subtly influence both emotional state and decision-making. In a laboratory experiment, participants who sat upright reported more positive feelings and performed better on a task involving risk and reward than those who slouched or sat in a control condition. The effects were relatively small and observed under controlled conditions, but they offer fresh evidence that physical position can affect mood and behavior, according to senior author Jorge Armony, a professor in the departments of psychiatry and psychology at McGill.

Armony worked with graduate student Soren Wainio-Theberge, who came up with the original idea and coauthored the paper. The team recruited nearly 200 people from the McGill community. Participants first completed tests using a computer monitor, then were asked to do another task on a tablet while being told the researchers were evaluating a mobile app. The tablet setup was designed to subtly influence how each person sat: in one group, the device was placed on a stand with an adjustable table, encouraging upright posture; in another, it lay flat on a lower desk, prompting participants to lean forward and hunch over.

Next, participants played a risk-taking game involving a virtual balloon. They could earn larger rewards by continuing to inflate it, but risk losing everything if it burst. Those in the upright group generally took greater risks and earned bigger rewards over the game. The researchers concluded these participants were not simply behaving recklessly. "This suggests they were not acting more impulsively but rather were engaging in more effective risk-taking," explained Armony. Questionnaire responses also showed significantly stronger feelings of pride in the upright group, an emotion linked to a more positive mood.

The experiment was designed to address several criticisms of earlier posture studies. Instead of directly instructing participants to sit a certain way, the researchers altered the environment so posture changed without the participants knowing why. This approach countered a major criticism of "power pose" research: that participants might behave differently because they knew what was expected. After the experiment, most participants said they had not realized their posture was being manipulated. The team also used video software to measure each participant's neck angle, verifying that the physical setup produced the intended posture—an objective measurement often missing from previous studies.

Armony cautioned that simply changing posture is unlikely to transform anyone's life, but the results raise questions about whether everyday environmental features, including workplace ergonomics, may have small but measurable effects on emotions and decision-making. The paper, "Manipulating posture implicitly through environmental constraints influences mood and risk-taking behaviour," was published in the British Journal of Psychology and received support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.