Fold Your Arms — You Will Try Harder and Generate More Ideas

This study is courtesy of the BPS Research Digest blog, which as I have written here before, does a lovely job of summarizing psychological research from peer review journals.  They describe an experiment which found that, when people cross their arms, they persisted twice as long when presented with anagrams that were impossible to solve, and when presented with anagrams that had multiple solutions, subjects who crossed their arms generated more solutions than subjects who kept their arms at their sides.  The researchers speculate that this happens because "over
many years, the act of crossing our arms comes to be implicitly
associated with perseverance, so that adopting that position activates
a nonconscious desire to succeed."  The researchers also caution that folding arms can be a sign of social distance (and I would add, a sign that people are uptight or trying to dominate others). 

Next time I am in a group that is facing difficult task, I am going to suggest that we all cross our arms and see if it helps!