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Shoulders down calms your brain
Why we hunch
Hunching exists to protect the neck. Tucking the chin and pulling the shoulders up toward the ears covers the throat, an evolutionary protective posture, and the brain reads it as a sign of danger.
What cortisol does
Danger raises cortisol, and cortisol shuts down thinking. It also brings dry mouth, blushing, and running out of oxygen, the whole list of awkwardness cues. Vocal power drops too, and the voice slides into vocal fry. The person also looks less confident, and the difference can be a single posture change.
The winner's posture
Shoulders down and back with the head held high exposes the jugular, and the brain answers that everything is fine. Winning athletes take the same posture at the finish of a race: they take up space, lower their shoulders, and tilt the head toward the sky. The measurement that matters is the distance between the earlobe and the shoulder, and the bigger the gap, the more confident a person looks and feels.
Why do confident animals make themselves bigger?
In 1872 Charles Darwin described what he called the principle of antithesis in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Opposite states of mind, he argued, tend to produce opposite postures. He illustrated it with drawings of a dog, which stands tall when hostile and crouches low when humble and affectionate. Many animals have since been found to make themselves look larger to signal dominance.
Why do people hunch when startled?
In 1939 Carney Landis and William Hunt used high-speed film to record people reacting to a sudden pistol shot. The startle pattern began with an eye blink and continued with the head and neck pushing forward and the shoulders rising. The entire response unfolded in a fraction of a second. Researchers have since described it as a protective reflex that braces the neck and eyes.
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