8 Ways Body Language Beats IQWhen it comes to success, its easy to think that people blessed with brains are inevitably going to leave the rest of us in the dust, but social psychologist Amy Cuddy knows first-hand how attitude can outweigh IQ.Cuddy suffered a car accident at the age of 19 which resulted in brain damage that took 30 points from her IQ. Before the crash Cuddy had an IQ near genius levels; her post-crash IQ was just average.As someone who had always built her identity around her intelligence, the significant dip in Cuddys IQ left her feeling powerless and unconfident. Despite her brain damage, she slowly made her way through college and even got accepted into the graduate program at Princeton.Once at Princeton, Cuddy struggled until she discovered that it was her lack of confidence that was holding her back, not her lack of brainpower. This was especially true during difficult conversations, presentations, and other high-pressure, highly important moments.This discovery led Cuddy, now a Harvard psychologist, to devote her studies to the impact body language has on your confidence, influence, and, ultimately, success. Her biggest findings center on the powerful effects of positive body language. Positive body language includes things like appropriate eye contact, active engagement/listening, and targeted gestures that accentuate the message youre trying to convey. Studies show that people who use positive body language are more likable, competent, persuasive, and emotionally intelligent.Heres how it works:Positive body language changes your attitude. Cuddy found that consciously adjusting your body language to make it more positive improves your attitude because it has a powerful impact on your hormones.It increases testosterone. When you think of testosterone, its easy to focus on sports and competition, but testosterones importance covers much more than athletics. Whether you are a man or a woman, testosterone improves your confidence and causes other people to see you as more trustworthy and positive. Research shows that positive body language increases your testosterone levels by 20%.It decreases cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone that impedes performance and creates negative health effects over the long term. Decreasing cortisol levels minimizes stress and enables you to think more clearly, particularly in difficult and challenging situations. Research shows that positive body language decreases cortisol levels by 25%.It creates a powerful combination. While a decrease in cortisol or an increase in testosterone is great on its own, the two together are a powerful combination that is typically seen among people in positions of power. This combination creates the confidence and clarity of mind that are ideal for dealing with tight deadlines, tough decisions, and massive volumes of work. People who are naturally high in testosterone and low in cortisol are known to thrive under pressure. Of course, you can use positive body language to make yourself this way even if it doesnt happen naturally.It makes you more likeable. In a Tufts University study, subjects watched soundless clips of physicians interacting with their patients. Just by observing the physicians body language, subjects were able to guess which physicians ended up getting sued by their patients.