Why Sitting Up Straight Can Boost Your Career

Your posture can have a huge effect on the way you feel and the way you present yourself.

It looks as though your mother was right, you really should sit up straight. Not only does having good posture look professional, it can also help you find the right job. It sounds silly on the surface, but according to recent research, sitting up straight can raise your self esteem and cause you to feel more confident in yourself and your abilities.

And, we all want that, right?

The study was conducted by the European Journal of Social Psychology, and it was designed to find out how self-confidence can change based on posture. What they did was divide a group of students into four groups, then each group was asked to sit in a different way. Two groups were asked to sit up straight, while the other two were asked to slouch.

Next, one slouching and one straight sitting group were asked to write down three of their positive traits. The other two groups were asked to write down three of their negative traits. The goal here was to get some groups thinking about themselves in a positive way and the remaining half to focus on the negative.

Their objective was to find out if the participant's posture had any impact on whether they actually believed the things they were writing about themselves. To do this, they asked the students if they were:

• a good interviewee for a specific job opening
• a good candidate for the job market
• an excellent employee
• satisfied with their career choices

It's interesting that study found that the people who were sitting up straight were considerably more likely to believe the positive things they had written down. In fact, they rated themselves higher, by an overwhelming majority. The students who were slouching weren't nearly as sure about the positive traits they had written down and came across as more insecure and less assertive and confident. However, for the groups that had been focused on their negative traits, their posture didn't seem to make much difference in their overall confidence.

So, what can we learn from this research? Well, it was only one study, but it does seem to make sense. Being self-confident can help you sell yourself more effectively in an interview. If you want to give yourself a boost before your next interview, spend some time writing down a few positive things about yourself and remember to sit up straight while waiting for the interviewer.

What do you think about this study? Are you are sloucher, or do you prefer to sit up straight? Let me know what you think in the comments.

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for HealthcareJobsiteBlog. Along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.

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