You Can Tell A Lot About A Person’s Personality Just By The Way They Stand, According To Research
The way someone carries themselves could give insight into the kind of person they are.
any_tka | Canva Pro A person's inner character can make itself known through a variety of traits like birth order, music taste, socializing habits, and even astrology. Now, researchers at McGill University have found that a person's preferred posture when standing can be used as a window into their personality, too.
The research, led by Soren Wanio-Theberge and Jorge Armony, found that body language can reveal a great deal about a person's character. It isn't just in heated moments, either, but in everyday life.
A study found that you can tell a lot about someone's personality just by the way they stand.
Milad Heran | Pexels
Researchers were able to measure their findings based on five different studies, where four of them relied on photos that participants submitted of themselves standing in a natural pose. There were 608 young adult participants, and ratings of their postures across time tended to be stable, which supported the idea that baseline stance is more of a passing mood.
In one experiment, participants were told to pose in a dominant or submissive way. In the submissive stance, they adopted a stooped, bent-forward posture. When told to appear dominant, they stood upright, with hips forward and torso leaning backward.
How participants held their heads correlated with dominant and more passive personality traits.
The most informative feature for scientists was how participants' heads tilted up or down. Scientists found that the position of the neck, combined with body posture and stance, correlated directly with personality.
More upright individuals tended, on average, to have a more dominance-oriented personality and scored higher on some of the manipulative/antisocial personality trait measures. This isn't exactly just a straight posture either. Researchers described it as a person who naturally held their chin higher, almost like a person looking down their nose at you.
Those who held their heads higher also tended to score higher on dominance-related and some antisocial/manipulative traits. They also scored lower on empathy and anger control.
People with more 'erect' postures scored higher on personality traits associated with psychopathic tendencies.
Scientists concluded that standing tall and straight usually takes effort and often draws "deferential treatment." Those who scored lower on dominance-related traits showed a wider range of stances rather than sticking to one "strong" look.
When meeting someone for the first time, people usually take in more than one cue. Some of those cues include a person's voice, their face, the type of handshake they give you, and their movement. Someone who is standing up straight might come across as being trustworthy and confident. But, in special circumstances, a consistently straight posture was associated with stronger dominant and related traits.
On the other hand, someone who slumps all of the time might be perceived as timid, but context matters, and that might not be the case at all. Relaxed postures in certain environments might not read well, like at work, but these stances are much more approachable in social situations, making the person seem easy to approach and talk to.
As BetterHelp noted, however, relaxed and timid can often be misinterpreted. Looking down is not cool and casual, whereas eye contact is as long as it's not intense. Everything is relative to the environment.
Scientists did warn people to avoid those who try to use their bodies as an intimidation tactic, even if they aren't able to fully succeed. They're usually people who tend to fall on the more manipulative side and should be handled with caution.
Whether or not you choose to judge someone based on their posture, the research and findings can definitely help in learning more about someone's personality. While that context can matter, there are also many other things that can help in forming an impression of someone and paint a much fuller picture of the kind of person they are.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
