Leaning toward a decision

You’re a rational sort of person. You make carefully weighted decisions based on evaluating the available data and arriving at a conclusion that meets the needs of the context. Or does your decision making process just depend on how you are standing? According to a new study, your posture can certainly impact your thought processes.

For the study, the researchers noted that in the Western world when we think about numbers we mentally represent smaller numbers to the left and larger numbers to the right. One way to investigate the connection between posture and decisions then would be to see if leaning one way or another influences our estimates of quantities.

So, the researchers had their subjects balance on a Wii Balance Board that manipulated their position to tilt to the left or to the right or to stay upright while they answered questions that appeared on a screen. The participants were told that they would probably not know the answers to the questions so they would have to estimate. The questions included; how high is the Eiffel Tower, how much alcohol is there in whiskey, and how many number one hits did Michael Jackson have? On the screen, below the question, was a graphic which showed that the subject’s posture was upright even when it was not.

The results showed that people gave lower estimations when leaning to the left than when standing upright or leaning to the right. However, leaning to the right did not differ significantly from standing upright.

What this shows yet again, is that your mind is constantly monitoring information coming to it from your body and uses that information to form an image and version of the world. Your mind and body are not discrete and disconnected but are actually part of an interactive, feed-back based, whole.

The bottom line of this extremely significant piece of research offering real insight into the human condition, is that next time you are asked to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar…stand up straight.