People With Good Posture Are More Likely To Have This Sinister Personality Trait, According To Research
Of course, some people just have good posture.
elenavolf | Shutterstock Good posture is something that many people covet — and, in some time periods, was even expected. Who doesn’t remember images of women from a bygone era walking around while balancing stacks of books on their heads?
Plenty of people still wish for better posture. But, could it point to something deeper?
According to research, people with good posture are more likely to have a sinister personality trait.
Soren Wanio-Theberge and Jorge Armony of Canada’s McGill University studied the links between one’s emotions and corresponding body language. University of Massachusetts’ Professor Emerita Susan Krauss Whitbourne wrote about the findings for Psychology Today.
Wanio-Theberge and Armony’s research included 608 young adults. Whitbourne summarized the work, saying that the “research team embarked on a series of five studies in which they assessed both personality and posture.”
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Four of the five studies required the participants to turn in photos of themselves standing in what they considered to be a “natural pose.” For the fifth study, participants came to the lab to “[complete] a set of physiological measurements.”
One of the team’s earliest findings was that those who stood with “more erect postures” also had a higher risk of “psychopathic tendencies.” This finding was replicated across two of the five studies and was also supported by a third study in which participants were asked to stand in what they thought of as a dominant manner.
The fifth study confirmed what researchers already knew at that point.
“The set of traits included in the final study included psychopathy, manipulativeness ... competitiveness and belief in the existence of social hierarchies,” Whitbourne recounted. “In the words of the authors, this range of undesirable attributes reflects ‘the use of intimidation in order to improve one’s access to resources in the environment at the expense of others.’”
Not everyone with good posture is a psychopath.
It's a big leap to say that those with good posture are inherently more psychopathic. We've all been told to stand up straight, and some people likely took that suggestion to heart. Furthermore, posture can be pretty fickle. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “There’s no such thing as perfect or imperfect posture. Everyone’s body is slightly different.”
Whitbourne acknowledged this. “What if you’re the type of person who just naturally stands straight?” she asked. “Maybe you were fortunate enough to take dance lessons or participate in sports as a youngster, and a steady posture was one of those benefits.”
So, one cannot definitively say whether or not someone is a psychopath based simply on their posture alone. The research performed evidently needs more information to back up these conclusions.
Still, there are indications that people with good posture may lean closer to being psychopathic.
While good posture cannot alone be used to determine if someone is a psychopath, it certainly can be an indication. As Whitbourne and Wanio-Theberge, and Armony pointed out, people who seek to overpower those around them may choose to stand taller and broader, whether they’re making that choice consciously or not.
“These individuals become treated as superior by others,” Whitbourne said, “which only whets their desire for winning out even more.”
Healthline listed some of the symptoms of psychopathy, including “disregarding or violating the rights and feelings of others,” “aggressive and violent behavior and constant irritability.” Someone experiencing these symptoms may seek to appear dominant and overpowering and good posture is one way to accomplish this.
While more research is needed to say whether or not good posture is a certain sign of psychopathy, Wanio-Theberge and Armony’s work does bring us one important step closer to understanding the link between how we feel and how we present ourselves.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.