TED: Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are

(Video Clip)
Questions:
a. Did the speech have a definite purpose? If so, was it stated in plain words or only
implied? What part of the speech was this given?
b. Did the speech have definite main points? If so, were they stated clearly? Were they
arranged in a clear thought pattern?
c. Was there enough supporting material? Was it arranged in a clear thought pattern?
d. If you were giving this speech, how would you change the outline?

The speech did have a definite purpose. Amy Cuddy said, We are also
influenced by our nonverbal, our thoughts and our feelings and our physiology, in the
introductory part of her speech. By hearing that statement I knew right away that her
purpose is to inform people that our body language shapes who we are. Do our
nonverbal govern how we think and feel about ourselves? This question she asked
likely supports what she aims in her speech. These statements were given in the first
ten minutes of her speech.

There are main points she specified about the evidences on how nonverbal
communication governs how a person thinks about himself: physiologically, logically
and statistically. Hormones highly contribute to the changes of a persons way of
thinking. She stated, Physiologically, there also are differences on two key hormones:

testosterone, which is the dominance hormone, and cortisol, which is the stress
hormone. Their team conducted an experiment about the minds response to body
language. So this is what we find. Risk tolerance, which is the gambling, what we find
is that when you're in the high-power pose condition, 86 percent of you will gamble.
When you're in the low power pose condition, only 60 percent, and that's a pretty
whopping significant difference. Here's what we find on testosterone. From their
baseline when they come in, high-power people experience about a 20-percent
increase, and low-power people experience about a 10-percent decrease. So again, two
minutes, and you get these changes. Here's what you get on cortisol. High-power
people experience about a 25-percent decrease, and the low-power people experience
about a 15-percent increase. Therefore, people with high-power poses tend to feel
assertive, confident and comfortable while people who do low-power poses have a
tendency to be more stress-reactive. The main points she laid down were arranged in a
clear thought for she started it with a scientific basis and supported it more with
experimentation. The data her team gathered is parallel to what she wanted to point out.
Her points were clearly stated with the help of the visual aid she used. Moreover, there
were enough supporting materials to sustain what her speech is all about. She gave
simple examples such as President Obama and the Prime Ministers video clip, Alex
Todorovs judgments about the political candidates' faces that predict 70 percent of U.S.
Senate and gubernatorial race outcomes, a scientific basis on how hormones, a
humans physiological feature, have an effect on a person that make up his thoughts
and feelings through experiment, and also her personal experience of Fake it til you
become it, contributes to the foundation of her speech.

If I were given this speech I would change the outline of the speech by rearranging the
evidences Cuddy has given. I want the flow of the speech to become more general to
specific. I prefer general-to-specific pattern not only because I frequently use it but also
because of its versatility as well as its obvious ability to quickly and effectively introduce
my audience to the ideas I want to impart.