Presence

Don't fake it till you make it, fake it until you become it - the essential guide to body language

Amy Cuddy shows how your body language influences others and even changes the way you see yourself.

Social scientists have shown that we make sweeping inferences and judgements based on body language, judgements that can predict meaningful life outcomes like who we hire, who we promote, who we ask out on a date, who we invest in and who we trust. In Presence, Amy Cuddy reveals that we have the power not only to affect how others see us but also to change how we see ourselves and even the ability to alter our own chemistry, simply by changing body positions.

Cuddy's research shows how faking body postures that convey competence and power (power posing) even for as little as two minutes changes our cortisone and testosterone levels, increases our appetite for risk, helps us perform better in job interviews and configures our brains to cope in stressful situations. If you act powerfully, you will begin to think powerfully.

About the Author

Amy Cuddy is a Harvard Business School social psychologist. She studies how non-verbal behaviour and snap judgements affect people from the classroom to the boardroom. Her TED talk has been viewed over 15 million times and ranks in the top ten most viewed TED talks of all time.