The Story Collider | Amy Cuddy: Passing As Myself
March 22, 2024
After a terrible head injury, Amy Cuddy wakes up in the hospital to find she’s a different person. Amy Cuddy is a social psychologist and…
Social Psychologist, NYT Best-Selling Author, Award-Winning Scholar, Lecturer
A bold and captivating voice in the field of social psychology, Dr. Amy Cuddy demystifies the science behind power, presence, and prejudice – and their influence on human behavior. The question that drives her work: “How can we take control of our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in ways that boost our confidence, presence, performance, courage, and overall well-being?”
Cuddy is widely recognized for her enduringly popular 2012 TED Talk, “Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are” — the third most-watched TED Talk of all time with over 70 million views, named by The Guardian as ‘One of 20 Online Talks that Could Change Your Life.’
With her eloquent, relatable, and warm-hearted delivery, Cuddy moves and inspires listeners through her transformational theories that show us how everyone can harness their own power and bravery.
The pandemic and concurrent economic and cultural shifts have propelled workers and leaders into a new “Flux Era.” This new and ongoing flux has created a stew of conflicting emotions — hope, fear, excitement, dispiritedness, relief, and tension. And although human beings are more resilient than we generally appreciate, this psychological tilt-a-whirl has caused many of us to feel a loss of agency, leading us to make rash decisions. With her extensive background in cutting-edge behavioral science and research, Amy Cuddy offers answers in this groundbreaking and energizing talk on the workforce’s most top-of-mind questions around returning to work, such as:
Combining her openness and warmth with her deep expertise, Amy delivers this timely speech on how to come to terms with and thrive in these tumultuous times.
Social media is a rocket fuel for our worst impulses, says Amy Cuddy, exacerbating incivility and bullying among adults both online and offline. But the same psychological mechanisms that elicit bullying – tribalism, the influence of norms, and desire for status – can just as easily be used to decrease bullying and increase bravery. The same human tendencies that are activated for bad, argues Cuddy, can be activated for good.
“Now, more than any other time, we have the science – and the stories – to build a brand new program to fight against this menace,” Cuddy says.
In this talk, based on her upcoming book, Bullies, Bystanders, and Bravehearts, she covers the staggering psychological, physical, and socio-economic costs of bullying to individuals, organizations, and societies – and the unprecedented and surprising opportunities we have to engage in and lead through social bravery. She compellingly demonstrates that when we understand the psychology of these dynamics, virtually all of us will have the power to be bravehearts, rather than passive bystanders.
A renowned social psychologist, Cuddy shares an acute combination of scientific expertise and first-hand experience, drawing both from her personal journey and the stories of others to communicate important human truths.
With urgency and hope, she uncovers the psychological levers that trigger bullying, provides a fascinating and unique lens on its toll, and inspires audiences to galvanize their own bravery so we can all be better together.
For more than twenty years, Amy Cuddy has been studying and writing about prejudice and the psychological underpinnings of how we judge and treat others.
She breaks down who and why we envy, pity, admire, and hate. Why we bend over backwards to help some people – while turning a blind eye to the mistreatment of others. Why we assume some people will be allies and others, predators. And how those feelings and interactions affect how we see ourselves, and how we feel and behave in the future.
As her primary area of research, Cuddy draws from a deep well of knowledge and science to present a powerful and provocative evidence-based discussion that helps audiences understand how bigotry often plays a starring role in prejudice and workplace mobbing.
Our biases – whether simple or complex – impact the quality of our interactions and our productivity at work, says Cuddy. With potency and warmth, she shares with audiences how to reject and transcend stereotypes that divide and disempower, so that we can band together to categorically reject harassment and bullying at work.
Some of life’s biggest hurdles call for moments of sincerity and control. Too often, we approach these high-pressure moments with fear, and execute with anxiety. Based on her best-selling book Presence, social psychologist Amy Cuddy shares revolutionary research and personal narratives in this impassioned, engaging and innovative presentation. You will learn simple techniques to complete inner transformation, harness the power of presence and perform at the highest levels of confidence.
From the classroom to the boardroom, nonverbal behavior directly impacts the levels of trustworthiness and strength we present to others—and to ourselves—in our daily interactions. Social psychologist, award-winning teacher and best-selling author Amy Cuddy shares the groundbreaking and compelling research for which she has garnered national acclaim to teach audiences how to become more influential in their personal and professional lives. Explaining how nonverbal behavior and snap judgments influence people, Cuddy examines how leaders can use this cutting-edge science to prepare the brain for high-stakes situations, perform at their best and empower others to do the same.
Social psychologist, NYT-bestselling author, and award-winning Harvard lecturer Dr. Amy Cuddy is an expert on the behavioral science of power, presence, and prejudice. Cuddy earned her PhD from Princeton University in 2005, was a professor at Harvard Business School from 2008-2017, at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management from 2006-2008, and Rutgers University from 2005-2006. Amy has taught in Executive Education programs at Harvard Business School and, more recently, UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Amy’s first book Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges (Little, Brown, & Co., 2015), is a New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, and Globe & Mail bestseller and has been published in 35 languages and has sold more than half a million copies. As described in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, “Cuddy brings an abundance of humility and charm to the page. Her presence itself– her openhearted desire to help the insecure and the uneasy in this age of anxiety–shines through. Presence feels at once concrete and inspiring, simple but ambitious–above all, truly powerful.” Amazon selected Presence as the ‘Best Book of December 2015’.
Dr. Cuddy’s TED Talk, Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are is the third-most-viewed TED talk of all time and has more than 70 million views. Named by The Guardian as ‘One of 20 Online Talks that Could Change Your Life’, her talk has reached and influenced how building confidence under stressful situations is taught and practiced worldwide. A pop-culture phenomenon, Amy and her talk have been referenced in the TV shows Ted Lasso, Grey’s Anatomy (four times), Sex Education, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, The Bold Type, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and others.
Focusing on the power of prejudice and stereotyping, nonverbal behavior, the delicate balance of trustworthiness and strength, and the ways in which people can affect their own thoughts, feelings, performance, and psychological and physical well-being, she studies, writes, and speaks about how we can become more present, influential, compassionate, and satisfied in our professional and personal lives. She is currently writing her second book, Bullies, Bystanders, and Bravehearts (Mariner, 2023), which delves into the psychological causes and consequences of bullying among adults, a pervasive and often devastating problem, and the steps that we all must take to move toward social bravery in our daily lives and broader culture.
Amy has been named by the BBC as one of their 100 Women of 2017, a Game Changer by Time, one of 50 Women Who Are Changing the World by Business Insider, one of the World’s Top 50 Management Thinkers by Thinkers50, one of the Top 50 Leadership Innovators Changing How We Lead by Inc., one of the top 5 HR Thinkers by HR Magazine, one of Twitter’s 100 Science Stars by Science, one of 10 Ten Bostonians Who are Upending the Way We Live, Lead, and Learn by Boston Magazine, a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science, an Early Career Award recipient by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, winner of a Harvard Excellence in Teaching Award, and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
Amy’s highly cited research on stereotyping and prejudice, nonverbal behavior, and presence and performance under stress has been published in top academic journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Science, and Psychological Science, and featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Economist, Guardian, Wired, Fast Company, Inc., Globe and Mail, NPR, BBC, and many more. She has been a guest on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CBS Sunday Morning, BBC World News, Morning Joe, 60 Minutes with Charlie Rose, CNN with Anderson Cooper, among others. Cuddy has written for the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, CNN, and other outlets.
Amy was fantastic. She was great to work with beforehand and her closing keynote was a wonderful message with several ideas our attendees can implement in their school districts. She received a well-deserved standing ovation.
Amy Cuddy was a true inspiration to our audience and a joy to watch. Her work is interesting and relatable, and her presentation resonated with our attendees.
Telecommunications Foundation