PSYCH 614 Week 1 Social Psychology Methods and Replication Example

Should Job Seekers Strike a Power Pose Before Interviews? A Workforce Center Tests a Famous Finding Against Its Replications

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSYCH/614: Social Psychology

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The workforce center, its coach and the workshop request are composites written for a model paper; research findings come from the sources listed.

Social psychology studies how situations shape thoughts, feelings and behavior, and it does so mostly through experiments. In the past fifteen years, the field has also learned that some of its well-known findings do not hold up when repeated. This paper examines the field's methods and the replication debate through a question my workplace asked me to answer.

The Request

I work as a career coach at a public workforce center in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where about two hundred job seekers a month attend workshops on résumés, interviewing and job search. My manager watched a popular talk about "power posing" and asked me to add a segment to our interview workshop: before an interview, job seekers would stand for two minutes in an expansive pose, hands on hips or arms raised, to boost confidence and change their hormones. Before agreeing, I looked at the research.

How Social Psychologists Study Behavior

Social psychologists use several designs. Correlational studies measure variables as they occur and show whether they are related, but cannot show cause. An experiment changes one thing on purpose, uses chance to decide who gets which version and then compares the groups, which lets the researcher credit any gap to the change itself. Field experiments bring this logic into real settings. Internal validity asks whether an experiment's design allows causal conclusions; external validity asks whether the findings generalize to other people and settings. A laboratory study can be strong on the first and weak on the second.

Operational definitions translate abstract ideas into measurable terms. "Power" might be defined as an expansive posture held for two minutes; "confidence" might be measured with a questionnaire or through behavior such as risk-taking in a gambling task. How researchers define and measure such variables shapes what the results can mean.

The Original Experiment

Carney et al. (2010) randomly assigned forty-two participants to hold either two high-power poses, which were expansive and open, or two low-power poses, which were contractive and closed, for one minute each. Participants gave saliva samples before and after, completed a gambling task and rated how powerful they felt. High-power posers showed increased testosterone, decreased cortisol, greater willingness to take a gamble and higher feelings of power. The authors concluded that simple postural changes could produce meaningful psychological and physiological changes.

The study was well designed in some respects: it used random assignment and measured hormones objectively. But its sample was small, with about twenty people per condition, and it measured several outcomes, which increases the chance that some will reach significance by luck.

A Larger Replication

Ranehill et al. (2015) repeated the study with about two hundred participants, nearly five times as many, and preregistered key parts of their approach. Participants held poses for longer, and experimenters were unaware of the hypotheses. The replication found that high-power posers reported feeling more powerful, but found no effect on testosterone, cortisol or financial risk-taking. With a larger sample, the study had much greater power to detect real effects, which makes its null results on hormones and behavior more informative.

With five times the participants, the feeling remained and the hormones disappeared.

Why Small Studies Can Mislead

Simmons et al. (2011) showed through simulations and a demonstration experiment that common, often unreported choices in data analysis can produce statistically significant results for effects that do not exist. Such choices include collecting more data after checking results, deciding which measures or conditions to report, controlling for different variables and excluding certain participants. Each choice seems reasonable, but together they can raise the false-positive rate far above the nominal five percent. In a memorable demonstration, they used such choices to show that listening to a song about old age made participants younger. They proposed requirements for authors and reviewers, including deciding sample sizes in advance and reporting all measures and conditions.

This work does not imply that power pose researchers acted dishonestly. It shows how standard practices in the field at the time could produce fragile results, especially in small samples with multiple outcomes.

Looking at the Whole Literature

Single replications can also mislead. Cuddy et al. (2018), including one of the original authors, examined the published studies on postural feedback using a technique called p-curve analysis, which looks at the distribution of significant results to judge whether a set of studies reflects a real effect. They found evidence that expansive postures affect self-reported feelings of power, but the evidence for effects on hormones and behavior was weak or absent. The authors proposed redirecting the field toward the effects on feelings.

What the Full Record Supports

The cumulative evidence supports a modest claim: adopting an expansive posture may make people feel somewhat more powerful in the moment. It does not support claims that two minutes of posing changes testosterone or cortisol, or that it reliably changes behavior in high-stakes situations such as interviews. The first author of the original study later posted a public statement disowning the hormone and behavior effects, a striking example of science correcting itself.

Ethics in Social Psychology Research

Methods in social psychology also raise ethical questions. Many experiments use mild deception, such as concealing the hypothesis, which requires careful debriefing. Research with job seekers would require informed consent and protection from harm, such as avoiding anything that might make vulnerable participants feel foolish. Ethical research also includes honest reporting: preregistration, transparent analysis and sharing data help others check results.

What This Means for Our Workshop

I recommended against teaching power posing as a way to change hormones or guarantee interview success. Our job seekers deserve accurate information, and making claims we cannot support would undermine our credibility. Instead, I proposed a brief "confidence routine" before mock interviews: a minute of slow breathing, an upright posture and reviewing three accomplishments the job seeker wants to mention. I will present it as a way some people feel more ready, not as a scientific guarantee. My manager agreed, and we plan to ask participants afterward whether the routine helped them feel prepared.

What I Learned About Research

This exercise showed me why replication and transparency matter. A single small study, however elegant, is a starting point. Large, preregistered replications and analyses of the whole literature provide a firmer basis for decisions that affect real people. It also showed me that the people who correct a finding are often the field's own researchers, which is a reason for trust rather than cynicism. As a graduate student, I will ask of every finding: how large was the sample, has it been repeated and what does the full record show?

Conclusion

Power posing illustrates both the strengths and the vulnerabilities of social psychology's methods. Experiments can reveal how situations shape us, but small samples and flexible analyses can produce results that do not last. Following a finding through its replications allows practitioners to use what holds up and set aside what does not.

References

Carney, D. R., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Yap, A. J. (2010). Power posing: Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine levels and risk tolerance. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1363-1368. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610383437

Cuddy, A. J. C., Schultz, S. J., & Fosse, N. E. (2018). P-curving a more comprehensive body of research on postural feedback reveals clear evidential value for power-posing effects: Reply to Simmons and Simonsohn (2017). Psychological Science, 29(4), 656-666. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617746749

Ranehill, E., Dreber, A., Johannesson, M., Leiberg, S., Sul, S., & Weber, R. A. (2015). Assessing the robustness of power posing: No effect on hormones and risk tolerance in a large sample of men and women. Psychological Science, 26(5), 653-656. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614553946

Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science, 22(11), 1359-1366. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611417632