Amy Cuddy

Amy Cuddy
Amy J. C. Cuddy. Photo by Evgenia Eliseeva
Born	(1972-07-23) July 23, 1972 Robesonia, Pennsylvania
Nationality	American
Institutions	Rutgers University Kellogg School of Management Harvard Business School
Alma mater	University of Colorado Princeton University
Thesis	The bias map: behavior from intergroup affect and stereotypes (2005)
Doctoral advisor	Susan Fiske
Website people.hbs.edu/acuddy

Amy Joy Casselberry Cuddy (born July 27, 1972) is an American social psychologist, author and lecturer known for her research on stereotyping and discrimination, emotions, power, nonverbal behavior, and the effects of social stimuli on hormone levels.

Cuddy is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit.^[1] She has studied the origins and outcomes of how people judge and influence each other. She has done experimental and correlational research on stereotyping and discrimination (e.g., against Asian Americans, elderly people, Latinos, working mothers), the causes and consequences of feeling ambivalent emotions (e.g., envy and pity), nonverbal behavior and communication, and hormonal responses to social stimuli.

As a lecturer, Cuddy has spoken about the psychology of power, influence, nonverbal communication, and prejudice.^[2][3][4] She gave a TED talk about posing and nonverbal communication, which was one of the most popular of all time.^[5][6]

Career

Cuddy graduated from Conrad Weiser High School. She holds a PhD in Social Psychology from Princeton University, an MA in Social Psychology from Princeton University and a BA in Social Psychology from the University of Colorado.

Cuddy was an Assistant Professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University,^[7] where she taught leadership in organizations and research methods; and an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University, where she taught social psychology. She then joined Harvard Business School, where she has taught MBA courses on negotiation, power and influence, and executive education courses.

Research

Along with Susan Fiske and Peter Glick (Lawrence University), Cuddy developed the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) ^[8] and the Behaviors from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes (BIAS) Map. ^[9] These are used to classify judgments made of other people and groups based on how they are perceived along two core trait dimensions, warmth and competence, and to discern how these judgments shape and motivate our social emotions, intentions, and behaviors. ^[10]

These models are used to predict how people from different groups will interact with one another based on stereotypes they hold, or to predict existing stereotypes based on perceived interactions.

Power posing

In 2010, Cuddy carried out an experiment with Dana Carney and Andy Yap^[11] (UC-Berkeley) studying how nonverbal expressions of power (i.e., expansive, open, space-occupying postures)^[12] affect people’s feelings, behaviors, and hormone levels. ^[13] Their analysis claimed that adopting body postures associated with dominance and power (“power posing”) for as little as two minutes could increase testosterone, decrease cortisol, increase appetite for risk, and cause better performance in job interviews.

This was widely reported in popular media,^[14][15][16] with David Brooks summarizing the findings, “If you act powerfully, you will begin to think powerfully.”^[17]

Cuddy's work and her presentation of it were well received online. She gave a TED talk about power posing that was viewed by 37 million people,^[18] which was later turned into the book Presence.

Replication efforts

When other researchers tried to replicate the power posing study, they met mixed results. Larger studies did not find the same results, and in 2016 Carney concluded that the effect was not real.^[19]

In 2014, Eva Ranehill and colleagues tried to replicate the experiment with 200 participants, and a double-blind setup. Ranehill found power posing increased subjective feelings of power, but did not affect hormones or actual risk tolerance.^[20] Carney, Cuddy, & Yap responded^[21] with an overview of 33 published power posing studies, including the Ranehill study, almost all of which had reported some significant effect.^[11][22]

In 2015, two statisticians at the Wharton School, Simmons & Simonsohn, then did a meta-analysis of the same 33 studies,^[23] looking at the distribution of p-values across the studies (the 'p-curve'), finding no overall effect for power posing.^[24][25]

In 2016, Garrison et al^[26] carried out a 300-person pre-registered direct replication study. They found no effect or a negative effect on multiple measures of power.^[27]

In response to the results of these replication studies and meta-analysis, Carney repudiated the effect in an open letter, stating "The evidence against the existence of power poses is undeniable," and discouraging others from studying power poses.^[19]

Publications

Books

In 2015, Cuddy published the book Presence, promoting combining the outwardly-focused concept of projecting one's authentic self, with the inwardly-focused concept of presence — “believing in and trusting yourself – your real honest feelings, values and abilities.”^[28] The book reached #3 on The New York Times Best Seller list for Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous.^[29]

In 2016, Cuddy published the German-language book Dein Körper spricht für dich (Your body speaks for you), translated by Henriette Zeltner.^[30]

• Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, Little, Brown and Company, December 2015. ISBN 9780316256575
• Dein Körper spricht für dich: Von innen wirken, überzeugen, ausstrahlen (Your body speaks for you: From the inside, work, convince, radiate), Mosaik, April 2016. ISBN 9783442392964

Academic articles

• Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., & Beninger, A. (2011). The dynamics of warmth and competence judgments, and their outcomes in organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 31, 73-98.
• Carney, D., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Yap, A. (2010). Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance. Psychological Science, 21, 1363-1368
• Cuddy, A. J. C., Fiske, S. T., & Glick, P. (2008). Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social perception: The Stereotype Content Model and the BIAS Map. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (vol. 40, pp. 61–149). New York, NY: Academic Press.
• Cuddy, A. J. C., Fiske, S. T., & Glick, P. (2007). The BIAS Map: Behaviors from intergroup affect and stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 631-648.
• Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Glick, P. (2007). Universal dimensions of social cognition: Warmth, then competence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 77-83.
• Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 878-902

Awards and honors

• World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, 2014^[31]
• TEDGlobal Speaker, 2012^[32]
• TIME magazine ‘Game Changer’, 2012^[33]
• PopTech Annual Conference, 'Talk of the Day' October 21, 2011^[34]
• Rising Star Award, Association for Psychological Science (APS), 2011^[35]
• Psychology Today, The Top 10 Psychology Studies of 2010 (Carney, Cuddy, & Yap, 2010)
• Cover story, Harvard Magazine, Nov-Dec, 2010^[36]
• The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2009, Harvard Business Review^[37]
• Michele Alexander Early Career Award, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues

Personal life

Cuddy grew up in a very small Pennsylvania Dutch town, Robesonia, Pennsylvania. She is a classically trained ballet dancer and worked as a roller-skating waitress when she was an undergraduate at the University of Colorado at Boulder. When she was a sophomore in college, she sustained a serious head injury in a car accident.^{[38][39][40][41]} Her doctors told her she was not likely to fully recover and should anticipate significant challenges finishing her undergraduate degree. Her IQ fell temporarily by two standard deviations,^[42][43] which is about 30 points in IQ test.^[44] She eventually completed her undergraduate studies and went on to earn a PhD at Princeton. Cuddy has often tweeted of her love for live music, and spent a number of seasons following the Grateful Dead.

Cuddy has one son. In August 2014, in Aspen, Colorado, she married Paul Coster.

References

External links

Media

• Amy Cuddy at TED
  
  • TED Talk: Amy Cuddy: "Your body language shapes who you are" (TED Global, June 2012), about the effect of peoples' body language on their perception of how powerful they themselves are. (same video on YouTube)
• Interview with Anderson Cooper, host of AC360, about body language and the 2012 United States Presidential Debate between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney