Embodiment: I sat, I felt, I performed – Posture effects on mood and cognitive performance

Abstract

Previous embodiment findings indicate a relationship between physical posture and mood states, suggesting upright postures induce positive mood states. Findings also showed a relationship between moods and cognitive performance. While positive mood states were found to be related to increased processing speed, negative mood states were associated with higher processing accuracy in cognitive task performance. This implies that posture may affect the aforementioned sub-aspects of cognitive performance via mood states. Additionally, most studies on posture effects rely on explicit posture manipulation. With that in mind, our research explores the effects of implicitly manipulated postures on processing speed and accuracy and whether these effects are mediated by general mood. The results revealed that subjects in our sample (N = 82, M = 23.09years) who adopted an upright posture showed a more positive general mood (d = 0.50) and higher processing speed (d = 0.42) compared to those in stooped postures. Surprisingly, no differences in processing accuracy were found. There was no evidence of the proposed mediation in our data.

Keywords

• Embodied cognition
• General mood
• Posture
• Processing speed
• Processing accuracy