In the TED talk Your body language shapes who you are, Amy Cuddy argues that a persons expression or body language will show how the individual feels emotionally. Amy begins with the claim that society is influenced by our nonverbal. Nonverbal is our thoughts, and emotions. She begins to explain how body language shows dominance. Dominance is shown through a person who expresses an open body pose, which indicates they are taking up space. Where as an individual that does not feel as dominant will show a closed body pose, making themsleves smaller. Her mindset is that we can change how we feel about ourselves just by simply changing the position of our bodies. An experiment was conducted where she took both females and males and had them expresses a high power pose and low power pose. The individual with the high power poses where the ones that expressed the want to gamble, where the others felt like they had no chance. Amy from the experiment then begins to insist this method of “faking it until you become it”. Where if you keep going through the motions you will no longer need to fake it you will eventually just be doing it without an thought.
As for my own opinion I acknowledge her claim of body language being able to show how someones feeling inside. As a student when I’m in a class that I do not feel confident in I will usually sit more bundled up and to myself, where as when I’m in a class I enjoy I will engage and raise my hand more often. Amy talks about the expression “Fake it until you become it”, and I can relate with this claim. As a dental assistant there were a lot of steps I had to remember for different procedures. So the only way I could get through a day of work and not make the dentist upset with me was to fake it through the procedure. I would make it so he thought I knew what I was doing but I would just be going through the motions until I felt that it was just coming to me naturally. At at that moment I realized I became it.
