How You Sit Impacts How Attractive Others Find You, New Study Shows

BOSTON (CBS) – Watch your posture. If you are looking for a date, it could help.

A new study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that date seekers found people more attractive who sit with "expansive" posture, as compared to those who sat with a "contractive" nonverbal posture.

Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk, the author of the project, studied videos from nearly 150 speed dates that took place at Northwestern University in 2007.

In addition, Vacharkulksemsuk set up two online dating profiles for subjects in California.

One profile included a photo of the person sitting with their arms close to their body and their legs closed. The second profile featured a photo of the person in a more spread out position.

The results were the same throughout the study, Vacharkulksemsuk said. Subjects who sat more spread out were chosen more often by date seekers.

"Expansiveness makes the dating candidate appear more dominant," Vacharkulksemsuk found. "In a dating world in which success sometimes is determined by a split-second decision rendered after a brief interaction or exposure to a static photograph, single persons have very little time to make a good impression. Our research suggests that a nonverbal dominance display increases a person's chances of being selected as a potential mate."