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Body Posture

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

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Synonyms

Body language; Body position; Kinesics

Definition

Body posture refers to the way that the body is positioned, including whether one is standing or sitting, the relative positions of body parts, and how much space the body occupies. Body posture is a form of nonverbal communication.

Introduction

Body posture can be used to communicate information, intentions, and emotions without the need to produce speech. Body posture is informative about emotional states (Niedenthal 2007), and it has been shown that people are better at identifying facial displays of emotion when these are paired with congruent body postures (Mondloch et al. 2013). Furthermore, posture can modulate one’s own emotional experiences. For example, Stepper and Stack (1993) found that participants who received good news while adopting a slumped posture felt less proud and had lower mood than participants who received the same news while their head and shoulders were held high and straight.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Elizabeth S. Collier

Authors
  1. Elizabeth S. Collier
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elizabeth S. Collier .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland Univ Dept of Psycholgy, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana Weekes-Shackelford

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  3. Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

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Collier, E.S. (2016). Body Posture. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1417-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1417-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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