Powerful people feel taller than they are

Power gives people an exaggerated sense of their own height, a new study finds.

In a series of three experiments, researchers found a definite correlation between feeling powerful and feeling tall, and even suggest that future research may want to examine whether employers should consider placing short high-ranking workers in higher offices to raise their psychological sense of power.


Duguid says that while research has shown that “more physically imposing individuals are more likely to acquire power, this work is the first to show that powerful people feel taller than they are.”“Height is often used as a metaphor for power,” says Michelle M. Duguid, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis. “Powerful people ‘feel like the big man on campus,’ and people ‘look up to them.’ We find that the psychological experience of power may cause individuals to feel taller than objective measurement indicates they really are.”

In the first experiment, some participants were asked to recall an incident in which they had power over another individual while others were asked to recall an incident in which someone else had power over them.

They were then asked to estimate their size in relation to a pole that had been set precisely 20 inches taller than their actual heights.

Those who had been conditioned to feel “empowered” thought the pole was nearer in height to them than those who’d been made to feel subordinate.

In the second experiment, two pairs of volunteers were asked to role-play a scenario in which one was a manager and the other an ordinary worker.

They were then asked to give their exact heights in a questionnaire, and those who had played the role of manager supplied exaggerated figures.

Finally, the participants were conditioned in the same way as they were in the first experiment and then asked to choose an avatar in a second-life game that they thought best represented them. The more empowered volunteers consistently chose taller avatars.

“These findings may be a starting point for exploring the reciprocal relationship between the psychological and physical experiences of power,” Duguid says.

“An interesting direction for future research would be to determine whether associations between power and size extend to other self-perceptions and self-categorization.”

Jack Concalo of Cornell University was co-author of the paper published in the journal Psychological Science.

Read the original study here.