A good posture can boost confidence and promote self-assurance in people, according to a new study.

The researchers led by Richard Petty conducted the study on 71 Ohio State University students.

"Most of us were taught that sitting up straight gives a good impression to other people," said Petty.

"But it turns out that our posture can also affect how we think about ourselves. If you sit up straight, you end up convincing yourself by the posture you're in,” he added.

The students were asked to sit up straight and push out their chest, or to slouch, reports The China Daily.

They were then asked about the positive or negative traits they’d show as a hypothetical future employee.

"Their confident, upright posture gave them more confidence in their own thoughts, whether they were positive or negative. People assume their confidence is coming from their own thoughts. They don't realize their posture is affecting how much they believe in what they're thinking. If they did realize that, posture wouldn't have such an effect," said Petty.

In a similar experiment involving different students, " participants didn't report feeling more confident in the upright position than they did in the slouched position, even though those in the upright position did report more confidence in the thoughts they generated," said Petty.

A previous study also found that people who nodded their heads had more confidence in their thoughts than those who shook their heads back and forth.