January 25, 2012
There's a reason Tom Cruise, who stands just 170cm tall (on a good day), deemed himself suitable to play Jack Reacher, a character described as "a giant, standing at 6' 5" tall", in an upcoming big screen adaptation of Lee Child's novel "One Shot".
New research by the Association of Psychological Science reveals that people who feel powerful tend to overestimate their own height as they feel and believe to be physically larger than they actually are.
"Maybe there's a physical experience that goes along with being powerful," says Jack A. Goncalo of Cornell University, who co-wrote the paper with Michelle M. Duguid of Washington University.
"For people who are less powerful, maybe other people and objects loom larger, and for the powerful everything else just seems smaller."
In one experiment, subjects had their heights measured and were then given a leadership aptitude test and told that, based on their feedback, they would each be assigned to play the role of the manager or the employee. Afterwards, each person filled out a questionnaire with personal information, including eye colour and height.
People who had been told they would be the manager, with complete control over the work process and employee, said they were taller than they actual were. The subjects who had been told they would be the employee gave a height that was more or less the same as their real height.
"Given that height is associated with power, raising your height may make you feel powerful," Goncalo says, which helps explain the continuing popularity of high heels, offices on the top floor, and that crazy American presidential candidate who wore a gumboot on his head (see video below).
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