clothes influence people's behavior essay

Enclothed Cognition: How Clothes Affect the Mood and Behavior

Clothes are one of the basic needs of people, along with food, water, and shelter. But more than its basic functions of cover and protection from the elements, the clothes we wear also have a different function.

Clothes Make the Man

Famous writer and humorist  Mark Twain , once wrote “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” And while we place so much emphasis on not judging people based on their appearances, clothes have a way of affecting not just the way people see us but also our mood and behavior.

For instance, a lot of pieces of clothing carry with them some symbolic meaning. A judge’s robe stands for justice. An expensive suit symbolizes power. A policeman’s uniform signifies authority.

A few years ago, researchers from Northwestern University concluded that what you wear influences your ability to think and perform. In what was known as the Lab Coat Study, two groups of people were given lab coats to perform a specific set of tasks. One group was informed that the coat was a doctor’s; the other group was told it belongs to a painter.

After the tests were done, it was found that the group who believed their coats are doctors coats took on the typical qualities of a doctor, thus enabling them to perform with more precision and focus.

This psychological effect that the clothes have on the wearer’s behavior and thinking is called enclothed cognition. This means that whatever article of clothing you wear — robes, coats, suits, onesies, PPE, masks, goggles, plastic bracelets , boots, tactical pants — can affect your thoughts and actions.

A similar study in 2012 conducted by the University of Hertfordshire found that clothing reflects the wearer’s moods . Many of the women who participated in the study believe that they can alter their mood by their clothes.

We have listed several ways backed by science on how clothes affect your mood.

10 Ways That Clothes Can Affect a Person’s Mood

It can make you feel powerful.

The research was done with a group of people to challenge their cognitive skills. They were to complete five experiments in formal business suits. It was found that those who dressed up more felt more powerful and in control compared to those who were underdressed.

It can make you quick-witted.

Aside from making you feel powerful and in control, the same study also found that those who were better dressed for the part were more creative and thought up solutions faster than the others.

It can make you want to exercise.

You can’t motivate yourself to work out if you’re not wearing the proper exercise outfit, no matter what excuse you say. If you want to build the habit of exercising, start wearing your workout clothes to get you started. You’ll feel the need to work out once you’ve already put them on.

It can motivate you to work harder on your workouts.

Depending on your workout clothes, your attitude towards working out also shifts. Those who invest in more appropriate — but not necessarily expensive — workout clothes tend to outperform those who wear their old college tracksuits in the gym.

It can give you more focus on a task at hand.

When it comes to a lot of jobs, the ability to focus on your tasks despite the distractions around you — or if your work is pretty boring — is pretty challenging. As already mentioned above, the Lab Coat Study showed that those who believed their coats to be doctor’s coats allowed them to stay focused throughout the whole exercise.

It can make you get away with some stuff.

This one is mainly for those negotiating for better deals, perhaps over a house contract or a car price. It is found that between people who put on business suits, those who wore sweatpants, and those who were allowed to wear whatever they wanted, those who appeared more professional were more confident and unwavering during negotiations.

It can make you feel smarter.

According to one study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, wearing clothes associated with intelligence, such as a doctor’s coat, a judge’s robe, or a pilot’s uniform, makes one feel and act smarter.

Ultimately, your mood can be changed based on the clothes you wear. In most cases, people dress up the way they want to feel. If they’re feeling a bit insecure, one way to counter the feeling is to dress sharply. If people feel down and want some semblance of happiness, they dress up in clothes that make them feel good.

Now that you have a better idea about how clothes work on your psyche, put that knowledge to good use. Use clothes that will help you perform better and make you feel good about yourself.

About The Author

Samantha Smith

International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research

• Open access
• Published: 22 November 2014

Dress, body and self: research in the social psychology of dress

• Kim Johnson 1 ,
• Sharron J Lennon 2 &
• Nancy Rudd 3  

Fashion and Textiles volume  1 , Article number:  20 ( 2014 ) Cite this article

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The purpose of this research was to provide a critical review of key research areas within the social psychology of dress. The review addresses published research in two broad areas: (1) dress as a stimulus and its influence on (a) attributions by others, attributions about self, and on one's behavior and (2) relationships between dress, the body, and the self. We identify theoretical approaches used in conducting research in these areas, provide an abbreviated background of research in these areas highlighting key findings, and identify future research directions and possibilities. The subject matter presented features developing topics within the social psychology of dress and is useful for undergraduate students who want an overview of the content area. It is also useful for graduate students (1) who want to learn about the major scholars in these key areas of inquiry who have moved the field forward, or (2) who are looking for ideas for their own thesis or dissertation research. Finally, information in this paper is useful for professors who research or teach the social psychology of dress.

Introduction

A few social scientists in the 19 th Century studied dress as related to culture, individuals, and social groups, but it was not until the middle of the 20 th Century that home economists began to pursue a scholarly interest in social science aspects of dress (Roach-Higgins 1993 ). Dress is defined as “an assemblage of modifications of the body and/or supplements to the body” (Roach-Higgins & Eicher 1992 , p. 1). Body modifications include cosmetic use, suntanning, piercing, tattooing, dieting, exercising, and cosmetic surgery among others. Body supplements include, but are not limited to, accessories, clothing, hearing aids, and glasses. By the 1950s social science theories from economics, psychology, social psychology, and sociology were being used to study dress and human behavior (Rudd 1991 , p. 24).

A range of topics might be included under the phrase social psychology of dress but we use it to refer to research that attempts to answer questions concerned with how an individual’s dress-related beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, feelings, and behaviors are shaped by others and one’s self. The social psychology of dress is concerned with how an individual’s dress affects the behavior of self as well as the behavior of others toward the self (Johnson & Lennon 2014 ).

Among several topics that could be included in a critical review of research addressing the social psychology of dress, we focused our work on a review of published research in two broad areas: (1) dress as a stimulus and its influence on (a) attributions by others, attributions about self, and on one’s own behavior and (2) relationships between dress, the body, and the self. Our goal was to identify theoretical approaches used in conducting research in these areas, provide an abbreviated background of research in these areas highlighting key findings, and to identify future research directions and possibilities. The content presented features developing topics within the social psychology of dress and is useful for undergraduate students who want an overview of the content area. It is also useful for graduate students (1) who want to learn about the major scholars in these key areas of inquiry who have moved the field forward, or (2) who are looking for ideas for their own thesis or dissertation research. Finally, information in this paper is useful for professors who research or teach the social psychology of dress.

Body supplements as stimulus variables

In studying the social psychology of dress, researchers have often focused on dress as a stimulus variable; for example, the effects of dress on impression formation, attributions, and social perception (see Lennon & Davis 1989 ) or the effects of dress on behaviors (see Johnson et al. 2008 ). The context within which dress is perceived (Damhorst 1984-85 ) as well as characteristics of perceivers of clothed individuals (Burns & Lennon 1993 ) also has a profound effect on what is perceived about others. In the remainder of this section we focus on three research streams that center on dress (i.e., body supplements) as stimuli.

Provocative dress as stimuli

In the 1980s researchers were interested in women’s provocative (revealing, sexy) dress and the extent to which men and women attributed the same meaning to it. For example, both Edmonds and Cahoon ( 1986 ) and Cahoon and Edmonds ( 1987 ) found ratings of women who wore provocative dress were more negative than ratings of women who wore non-provocative dress. No specific theory was identified by these authors as guiding their research. Overall, when wearing provocative dress a model was rated more sexually appealing, more attractive, less faithful in marriage, more likely to engage in sexual teasing, more likely to use sex for personal gain, more likely to be sexually experienced, and more likely to be raped than when wearing conservative dress. Cahoon and Edmonds found that men and women made similar judgments, although men’s were more extreme than women’s. Abbey et al. ( 1987 ) studied whether women’s sexual intent and interest as conveyed by revealing dress was misinterpreted by men. The authors developed two dress conditions: revealing (slit skirt, low cut blouse, high heeled shoes) and non-revealing (skirt without a slit, blouse buttoned to neck, boots). Participants rated the stimulus person on a series of adjective traits. As compared to when wearing the non-revealing clothing, when wearing the revealing clothing the stimulus person was rated significantly more flirtatious, sexy, seductive, promiscuous, sophisticated, assertive, and less sincere and considerate. This research was not guided by theory.

Taking this research another step forward, in the 1990s dress researchers began to investigate how women’s provocative (revealing, sexy) dress was implicated in attributions of responsibility for their own sexual assaults (Lewis & Johnson 1989 ; Workman & Freeburg 1999 ; Workman & Orr 1996 ) and sexual harassment (Johnson & Workman 1992 , 1994 ; Workman & Johnson 1991 ). These researchers tended to use attribution theories (McLeod, 2010 ) to guide their research. Their results showed that provocative, skimpy, see-through, or short items of dress, as well as use of heavy makeup (body modification), were cues used to assign responsibility to women for their sexual assaults and experiences of sexual harassment. For example, Johnson and Workman ( 1992 ) studied likelihood of sexual harassment as a function of women’s provocative dress. A model was photographed wearing a dark suit jacket, above-the-knee skirt, a low-cut blouse, dark hose, and high heels (provocative condition) or wearing a dark suit jacket, below-the-knee skirt, high-cut blouse, neutral hose, and moderate heels (non-provocative condition). As compared to when wearing non-provocative dress, when wearing provocative dress the model was rated as significantly more likely to provoke sexual harassment and to be sexually harassed.

Recently, researchers have resurrected the topic of provocative (revealing, sexy) dress. However, their interest is in determining the extent to which women and girls are depicted in provocative dress in the media (in magazines, in online retail stores) and the potential consequences of those depictions, such as objectification. These researchers have often used objectification theory to guide their research. According to objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts 1997 ) women living in sexually saturated cultures are looked at, evaluated, and potentially objectified and treated as objects valued for their use by others. Objectification theory focuses on sexual objectification as a function of objectifying gaze, which is experienced in actual social encounters, media depictions of social encounters, and media depictions that focus on bodies and body parts. The theory explains that objectifying gaze evokes an objectified state of consciousness which influences self-perceptions. This objectified state of consciousness has consequences such as habitual body and appearance monitoring and requires cognitive effort that can result in difficulty with task performance (Szymanski et al. 2011 ). In such an environment, women may perceive their bodies from a third-person perspective, treating themselves as objects to be looked at and evaluated.

Self-objectification occurs when people perceive and describe their bodies as a function of appearance instead of accomplishments (Harrison & Fredrickson 2003 ). Experimental research shows that self-objectification in women can be induced by revealing clothing manipulations such as asking women to try on and evaluate the fit of a swimsuit as compared to a bulky sweater (Fredrickson et al. 1998 ).

To examine changes in sexualizing (provocative) characteristics with which girls are portrayed in the media, researchers have content analyzed girls’ clothing in two magazines (Graff et al. 2013 ). Clothing was coded as having sexualizing characteristics (e.g., tightness, bare midriffs, high-heeled shoes) and childlike characteristics (e.g., frills, childlike print, pigtail hair styles). The researchers found an increase in sexualized aspects of dress in depictions of girls from 1971 through 2011. To determine the extent of sexualization in girls’ clothing, researchers have content analyzed girls’ clothing available on 15 retailer websites (Goodin et al. 2011 ). Every girl’s clothing item on each of the retailer websites was coded for sexualizing aspects; 4% was coded as definitely sexualizing. Ambiguously sexualizing clothing (25%) had both sexualizing and childlike characteristics. Abercrombie Kids’ clothing had a higher percentage of sexualizing characteristics than all the other stores (44% versus 4%). These two studies document that girls are increasingly depicted in sexualizing clothing in U.S. media and that they are offered sexualized clothing by major retailers via their websites.

Since girls are increasingly sexualized, to determine if sexualized dress affects how girls are perceived by others Graff et al. ( 2012 ) designed an experiment wherein they manipulated the sexualizing aspects of the clothing of a 5 th grade girl. There were three clothing conditions: childlike (a grey t-shirt, jeans, and black Mary Jane shoes), ambiguously sexualized (leopard print dress of moderate length), highly sexualized (short dress, leopard print cardigan, purse). In the definitely sexualized condition, undergraduate students rated the girl as less moral, self-respecting, capable, determined, competent, and intelligent than when she was depicted in either the childlike or the ambiguously sexualized conditions. Thus, wearing sexualized clothing can affect how girls are perceived by others, so it is possible that sexualized clothing could lead to self-objectification in girls just as in the case of women (Tiggemann & Andrew 2012 ).

Objectification theory has been useful in identifying probable processes underlying the association between women’s provocative dress and negative inferences. In a study using adult stimuli, Gurung and Chrouser ( 2007 ) presented photos of female Olympic athletes in uniform and in provocative (defined as minimal) dress. College women rated the photos and when provocatively dressed, as compared to the uniform condition, the women were rated as more attractive, more feminine, more sexually experienced, more desirable, but also less capable, less strong, less determined, less intelligent, and as having less self-respect. These results are similar to what had previously been found by researchers in the 1980s (Abbey et al. 1987 ; Cahoon & Edmonds 1987 ; Edmonds & Cahoon 1986 ). This outcome is considered objectifying because the overall impression is negative and sexist. Thus, this line of research does more than demonstrate that provocative dress evokes inferences, it suggests the process by which that occurs: provocative dress leads to objectification of the woman so dressed and it is the objectification that leads to the inferences.

In a more direct assessment of the relationship between provocative dress and objectification of others, Holland and Haslam ( 2013 ) manipulated the dress (provocative or plain clothing) of two models (thin or overweight) who were rated equally attractive in facial attractiveness. Since objectification involves inspecting the body, the authors measured participants’ attention to the models’ bodies. Objectification also involves denying human qualities to the objectified person. Two such qualities are perceived agency (e.g., ability to think and form intentions) and moral agency (e.g., capacity to engage in moral or immoral actions). Several findings are relevant to the research on provocative dress. As compared to models wearing plain clothing, models wearing provocative clothing were attributed less perceived agency (e.g., ability to reason, ability to choose) and less moral agency [e.g., “how intentional do you believe the woman’s behavior is?” (p. 463)]. Results showed that more objectified gaze was directed toward the bodies of the models when they were dressed in provocative clothing as compared to when dressed in plain clothing. This outcome is considered objectifying because the models’ bodies were inspected more when wearing provocative dress, and because in that condition they were perceived as having less of the qualities normally attributed to humans.

In an experimental study guided by objectification theory, Tiggemann and Andrew ( 2012 ) studied the effects of clothing on self-perceptions of state self-objectification, state body shame, state body dissatisfaction, and negative mood. However, unlike studies (e.g., Fredrickson et al. 1998 ) in which participants were asked to try on and evaluate either a bathing suit or a sweater, Tiggemann and Andrew instructed their participants to “imagine what you would be seeing, feeling, and thinking” (p. 648) in scenarios. There were four scenarios: thinking about wearing a bathing suit in public, thinking about wearing a bathing suit in a dressing room, thinking about wearing a sweater in public, and thinking about wearing a sweater in a dressing room. The researchers found main effects for clothing such that as compared to thinking about wearing a sweater, thinking about wearing a bathing suit resulted in higher state self-objectification, higher state body shame, higher state body dissatisfaction, and greater negative mood. The fact that the manipulation only involved thinking about wearing clothing, rather than actually wearing such clothing, demonstrates the power of revealing (provocative, sexy) dress in that we only have to think about wearing it to have it affect our self-perceptions.

Taking extant research into account we encourage researchers to continue to investigate the topic of provocative (sexy, revealing) dress for both men and women to replicate the results for women and to determine if revealing dress for men might evoke the kinds of inferences evoked by women wearing revealing dress. Furthermore, research that delineates the role of objectification in the process by which this association between dress and inferences occurs would be useful. Although it would not be ethical to use the experimental strategy used by previous researchers (Fredrickson et al. 1998 ) with children, it is possible that researchers could devise correlational studies to investigate the extent to which wearing and/or viewing sexualized clothing might lead to self- and other-objectification in girls.

Research on red dress

Researchers who study the social psychology of dress have seldom focused on dress color. However, in the 1980s and 1990s a few researchers investigated color in the context of retail color analysis systems that focused on personal coloring (Abramov 1985 ; Francis & Evans 1987 ; Hilliker & Rogers 1988 ; Radeloff 1991 ). For example, Francis and Evans found that stimulus persons were actually perceived positively when not wearing their recommended personal colors. Hilliker and Rogers surveyed managers of apparel stores about the use of color analysis systems and found some impact on the marketplace, but disagreement among the managers on the value of the systems. Abramov critiqued color analysis for being unclear, ambiguous, and for the inability to substantiate claims. Most of these studies were not guided by a psychological theory of color.

Since the 1990s, researchers have developed a theory of color psychology (Elliot & Maier 2007 ) called color-in-context theory. Like other variables that affect social perception, the theory explains that color also conveys meaning which varies as a function of the context in which the color is perceived. Accordingly, the meanings of colors are learned over time through repeated pairings with a particular experience or message (e.g., red stop light and danger) or with biological tendencies to respond to color in certain contexts. For example, female non-human primates display red on parts of their bodies when nearing ovulation; hence red is associated with lust, fertility, and sexuality (Guéguen and Jacob 2013 ). As a function of these associations between colors and experiences, messages, or biological tendencies, people either display approach responses or avoidance responses but are largely unaware of how color affects them. In this section we review studies that examine the effects of red in relational contexts such as interpersonal attraction. However, there is evidence that red is detrimental in achievement (i.e., academic or hiring) contexts (e.g., Maier et al. 2013 ) and that red signals dominance and affects outcomes in competitive sporting contests (e.g., Feltman and Elliot 2011 ; Hagemann et al. 2008 ).

Recently researchers have used color-in-context theory to study the effects of red dress (shirts, dresses) on impressions related to sexual intent, attractiveness, dominance, and competence. Some of these studies were guided by color-in-context theory. Guéguen ( 2012 ) studied men’s perceptions of women’s sexual intent and attractiveness as a function of shirt color. Male participants viewed a photo of a woman wearing a t-shirt that varied in color. When wearing a red t-shirt as compared to the other colors, the woman was judged to be more attractive and to have greater sexual intent. Pazda et al. ( 2014a , [ b ]) conducted an experiment designed to determine why men perceive women who wear red to be more attractive than those who wear other colors. They argued that red is associated with sexual receptivity due to cultural pairings of red and female sexuality (e.g., red light district, sexy red lingerie). Men participated in an online experiment in which they were exposed to a woman wearing either a red, black, or white dress. When wearing the red dress the woman was rated as more sexually receptive than when wearing either the white or the black dresses. The woman was also rated on attractiveness and by performing a mediation analysis the researchers determined that when wearing the red dress, the ratings of her attractiveness as a function of red were no longer significant; in other words, the reason she was rated as more attractive when wearing the red dress was due to the fact that she was also perceived as more sexually receptive.

Pazda et al. ( 2014a , [ b ]), interested in women’s perceptions of other women as a function of their clothing color, conducted a series of experiments. They reasoned that like men, women would also make the connection between a woman’s red dress and her sexual receptivity and perceive her to be a sexual competitor. In their first experiment they found that women rated the stimulus woman as more sexually receptive when wearing a red dress as compared to when she was wearing a white dress. In a second experiment the woman wearing a red dress was not only rated more sexually receptive, she was also derogated more since ratings of her sexual fidelity were lower when wearing a red dress as compared to a white dress. Finally, in a third experiment the stimulus woman was again rated more sexually receptive; this time when she wore a red shirt as compared to when she wore a green shirt. The authors assessed the likelihood that their respondents would introduce the stimulus person to their boyfriends and the likelihood that they would let their boyfriends spend time with the stimulus person. Participants in the red shirt condition were more likely to keep their boyfriends from interacting with the stimulus person than participants in the green shirt condition. Thus, both men and women indicated women wearing red are sexually receptive.

Also interested in color, Roberts et al. ( 2010 ) were interested in determining whether clothing color affects the wearer of the clothing (e.g., do women act provocatively when wearing red clothing?) or does clothing color affect the perceiver of the person wearing the colored clothing. To answer this question, they devised a complicated series of experiments. In the first study, male and female models (ten of each) were photographed wearing each of six different colors of t-shirts. Undergraduates of the opposite sex rated the photographed models on attractiveness. Both male and female models were rated most attractive when wearing red and black t-shirts. In study two the same photos were used, but the t-shirts were masked by a gray rectangle. Compared to when they wore white t-shirts, male models were judged to be more attractive by both men and women when they wore the red t-shirts, even though the red color was not visible. In the third study the t-shirt colors in the photos were digitally altered, so that images could be compared in which red or white t-shirts were worn with those in which red had been altered to white and white had been altered to red. Male models wearing red were rated more attractive than male models wearing white that had been altered to appear red. Also male models wearing red shirts digitally altered to appear white were rated more attractive than male models actually photographed in white. These effects did not occur for female models. The authors reasoned that if clothing color only affected perceivers, then the results should be the same when a model is photographed in red as well as when the model is photographed in white which is subsequently altered to appear red. Since this did not happen, the authors concluded that clothing color affects both the wearer and the perceiver.

In addition, the effects of red dress on impressions also extend to behaviors. Kayser et al. ( 2010 ) conducted a series of experiments. For experiment one, a female stimulus person was photographed in either a red t-shirt or a green one. Male participants were shown a photo of the woman and given a list of questions from which to choose five to ask her. Because women wearing red are perceived to be more sexually receptive and to have greater sexual intent than when wearing other colors, the researchers expected the men who saw the woman in the red dress to select intimate questions to ask and this is what they found. In a second experiment, the female stimulus person wore either a red or a blue t-shirt. After seeing her picture the male participants were told that they would be interacting with her, where she would be sitting, and that they could place their chairs wherever they wished to sit. The men expecting to interact with the red-shirted woman placed their chairs significantly closer to her chair than when they expected to interact with a blue-shirted woman.

In a field experiment (Guéguen 2012 ), five female confederates wore t-shirts of red or other colors and stood by the side of a road to hitchhike. The t-shirt color did not affect women drivers, but significantly more men stopped to pick up the female confederates when they wore the red t-shirts as compared to all the other colors. In a similar study researchers (Guéguen & Jacob 2013 ) altered the color of a woman’s clothing on an online meeting site so that the woman was shown wearing red or several other colors. The women received significantly more contacts when her clothing had been altered to be red than any of the other t-shirt colors.

Researchers should continue conducting research about the color of dress items using color-in-context theory. One context important to consider in this research stream is the cultural context within which the research is conducted. To begin, other colors in addition to red should be studied for their meanings within and across cultural contexts. Since red is associated with sexual receptivity, red clothing should be investigated in the context of the research on provocative dress. For example, would women wearing red revealing dress be judged more provocative than women wearing the same clothing in different colors? Also researchers interested in girls’ and women’s depictions in the media, could investigate the effects of red dress on perceptions of sexual intent and objectification.

Effects of dress on the behavior of the wearer

Several researchers studying the social psychology of dress have reviewed the research literature (Davis 1984 ; Lennon and Davis 1989 ) and some have analyzed that research (see Damhorst 1990 ; Hutton 1984 ; Johnson et al. 2008 for reviews). In these reviews, Damhorst and Hutton focused on the effect of dress on person perception or impression formation. Johnson et al., however, focused their analysis on behaviors evoked by dress. An emerging line of research focuses on the effects of dress on the behavior of the wearer (Adam and Galinsky 2012 ; Frank and Galinsky 1988 ; Fredrickson et al. 1998 ; Gino et al. 2010 ; Hebl et al. 2004 ; Kouchaki et al. 2014 ; Martins et al. 2007 ).

Fredrickson et al. ( 1998 ), Hebl et al. ( 2004 ), and Martins et al. ( 2007 ) all used objectification theory to guide experiments about women’s and men’s body image experience. They were interested in the extent to which wearing revealing dress could trigger self-objectification. The theory predicts that self-objectification manifests in performance detriments on a task subsequent to a self-objectifying experience. Frederickson et al. had participants complete a shopping task. They entered a dressing room, tried on either a one piece swimsuit or a bulky sweater, and evaluated the fit in a mirror as they would if buying the garment. Then they completed a math performance test. The women who wore a swimsuit performed more poorly on the math test than women wearing a sweater; no such effects were found for men. A few years later Hebl et al. ( 2004 ) used the same procedure to study ethnic differences in self-objectification. Participants were Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, and Asian American undergraduate men and women. Participants completed the same shopping task and math test. Participants who tried on the swimsuits performed worse on the math test than participants who tried on the sweater and these results held for both men and women of all ethnicities.

Martins et al. ( 2007 ) used the same shopping task as Frederickson et al. ( 1998 ) and Hebl et al. ( 2004 ), but employed a different behavioral measure. Their participants were gay and heterosexual men and the garment they tried on was either Speedo men’s briefs or a turtleneck sweater. After the shopping task the men were given the opportunity to sample and evaluate a snack and the amount eaten was measured. Wearing the Speedo affected eating for the gay men, but not the heterosexual men, such that gay men in the Speedo condition ate significantly less of the snack than gay men in the sweater condition. Taken together these studies demonstrate that a nominal clothing manipulation can have effects on the behavior of the wearer.

In one of the first studies to demonstrate the effects of clothing on the wearer, Frank and Gilovich ( 1988 ) noted that the color black is associated with evil and death in many cultures. They studied the extent to which players wearing black uniforms were judged more evil and aggressive than players wearing uniforms of other colors. They analyzed penalties awarded for aggressive behavior in football and ice hockey players. Players who wore black uniforms received more penalties for their aggressive behavior than those who wore other uniform colors. Since the penalty results could be due to biased refereeing, the authors videotaped a staged football game in which the defensive team wore either black or white uniforms. The same events were depicted in each version of the videotape. Participants watched short videos and rated the plays as more aggressive when the team members wore black as compared to white uniforms. In another part of the study, participants were assigned to wear either black or white uniform shirts. While wearing the shirts they were asked the type of games they would like to play; the black-shirted participants selected more aggressive games than the white-shirted participants. The authors interpreted the results of all the studies to mean that players wearing black are aggressive. Yet, when the level of aggressiveness was held constant in the staged football game, referees still perceived black-uniformed players to be more aggressive than white-uniformed players. The authors concluded that the color of the black uniform affects the wearer and the perceiver. This study’s results are similar to those of the researchers studying red dress who found that the color red is associated with a cultural meaning that affects both the wearer and the perceiver of the red dress (Roberts et al. 2010 ).

In a similar way, Adam and Galinsky ( 2012 ) determined that when clothing has symbolic meaning for the wearer, it also affects the wearer’s behavior. The researchers found that a white lab coat was associated with traits related to attentiveness. Then they conducted an experiment in which one group wore a white lab coat described as a painter’s coat and another group wore the same lab coat which was described as a medical doctor’s lab coat. A third group saw, but did not wear, a lab coat described as a medical doctor’s lab coat. Participants then performed an experimental task that required selective attention. The group that wore the coat described as a medical doctor’s lab coat outperformed both of the other two groups.

Gino et al. ( 2010 ) studied the effects of wearing designer sunglasses that were described either as counterfeit or authentic Chloe sunglasses on one’s own behaviors and perceptions of others. Although counterfeits convey status to others, they also mean that the wearers are pretending to be something they are not (i.e., wealthy enough to purchase authentic sunglasses). Participants who thought they were wearing fake sunglasses cheated significantly more on two experimental tasks than those who thought they were wearing authentic sunglasses. In a second experiment, the researchers showed that participants who believed they were wearing counterfeit sunglasses perceived others’ behaviors as more dishonest, less truthful, and more likely to be unethical than those wearing authentic sunglasses. In a third experiment the researchers showed that the effect for wearing counterfeit sunglasses on one’s own behavior was due to the meaning of inauthenticity attributed to the counterfeit sunglasses. Consistent with Adam and Galinsky ( 2012 ) and Frank and Gilovich (1988), in Gino et al. the effect of dress on one’s own behavior was due to the meaning of the dress cue in a context relevant to the meaning of that dress cue. While none of these three studies articulated a specific theory to guide their research, Adams and Galinsky outlined an enclothed cognition framework, which explained that dress affects wearers due to the symbolic meaning of the dress and the physical experience of wearing that dress item.

To summarize the research on the effects of dress on the behavior of the wearer, each of these studies reported research focused on a dress cue associated with cultural meaning. Some of the researchers had to first determine that meaning. The manipulations were designed so that the meaning of the dress cues was salient for the context of the manipulation. For example, in the objectification studies the revealingness of dress was varied in the context of a dressing room mirror where the revealing nature of the cue would be relevant. So to extend the enclothed cognition framework, we suggest that for dress to affect the wearer, the context of the experimental task needs to be such that the meaning of the dress item is salient.

Future researchers may continue to pursue the effects of dress on the wearer. The extended enclothed cognition framework could be applied to school uniforms. A possible research question could be that if school uniforms are associated with powerlessness among schoolchildren, would wearing school uniforms affect the level of effort children expend to solve homework problems or write papers?

It is interesting that previous researchers who examined the effect of school uniforms on various tasks did not ask children what associations uniforms had for them (e.g., Behling 1994 , 1995 ; Behling and Williams 1991 ). This question is clearly an avenue for renewed research in this area. Another situation to which the extended enclothed cognition framework might be investigated is in the context of professional sports. Since wearing a sweatshirt or cap with a professional team’s logo is associated with being a fan of that team, would people wearing those items evaluate that team’s performance higher than people wearing another team’s logos? Would they provide more excuses for their team than fans not wearing the team’s logos? We encourage researchers to continue to investigate the effects of dress on one’s own behaviors utilizing a range of dress cues (e.g., cosmetics, tattoos, and piercings).

Dress and the self

An ongoing area of research within the social psychology of dress is relationships between dress and the self. Although some researchers use the terms identity and self interchangeably, it is our position that they are not the same concepts but are related. We begin our discussion of the self with research on the body.

The physical body and the self

Whereas the first section of our review focused on body supplements (i.e., the clothed body), this section focuses on body modifications or how the body is altered. Within this discussion, the two research directions that we include are (1) body modifications that carry some risk, as opposed to routine modifications that typically do not, and (2) the influence of body talk and social comparison as variables influencing body image.

Body modifications that carry some risk

Societal standards of attractiveness in the Western world often focus on a thin appearance for women and a mesomorphic but muscular appearance for men (Karazia et al. 2013 ). Internalization of societal standards presented through various media outlets is widely recognized as a primary predictor of body dissatisfaction and risky appearance management behaviors including eating pathology among women (Cafri et al. 2005a , [ b ]), muscle enhancement and disordered eating behaviors in men (Tylka 2011 ), tattooing among young adults (Mun et al. 2012 ), and tanning among adolescents (Prior et al. 2014 ; Yoo & Kim, 2014 ). While there are several other risky appearance management behaviors in the early stages of investigation (e.g., extreme body makeovers, cosmetic procedures on male and female private parts, multiple cosmetic procedures), we isolate just a few behaviors to illustrate the impact of changing standards of attractiveness on widespread appearance management practices in the presentation of self.

Experimental research has demonstrated that exposure to social and cultural norms for appearance (via idealized images) leads to greater dissatisfaction with the body in general for both men and women (Blond 2008 ; Grabe et al. 2008 ); yet a meta-analysis of eight research studies conducted in real life settings suggested that these appearance norms were more rigid, narrowly defined, and prevalent for women than for men (Buote et al. 2011 ). These researchers also noted that women reported frequent exposure to social norms of appearance (i.e., considered bombardment by many women), the norms themselves were unrealistic, yet the nature of the messages was that these norms are perfectly attainable with enough time, money, and effort. Men, on the other hand, indicated that they were exposed to flexible social norms of appearance, and therefore report feeling less pressure to attain a particular standard in presenting their appearance to others (Buote et al. 2011 ).

Eating disorders

A recent stream of research related to individuals with eating disorders is concerned with the practice of body checking (i.e., weighing, measuring or otherwise assessing body parts through pinching, sucking in the abdomen, tapping it for flatness). Such checking behaviors may morph into body avoidance (i.e., avoiding looking in mirrors or windows at one’s reflection, avoiding gym locker rooms or situations involving showing the body to others) (White & Warren 2011 ), the manifestation of eating disorders (Haase et al. 2011 ), obsession with one’s weight or body shape, and a critical evaluation of either aspect (Smeets et al. 2011 ). The propensity to engage in body checking appears to be tied to ethnicity as White and Warren found, in their comparison of Caucasian women and women of color (Asian American, African American, and Latin American). They found significant differences in body checking and avoidance behaviors in Caucasian women and Asian American women over African American and Latin American women. Across all the women, White and Warren found positive and significant correlations between body checking and (1) avoidance behaviors and higher body mass index, (2) internalization of a thin ideal appearance, (3) eating disturbances, and (4) other clinical impairments such as debilitating negative thoughts.

Another characteristic of individuals with eating disorders is that they habitually weigh themselves. Self-weighing behaviors and their connection to body modification has been the focus of several researchers. Research teams have documented that self-weighing led to weight loss maintenance (Butryn et al. 2007 ) and prevention of weight gain (Levitsky et al. 2006 ). Other researchers found that self-weighing contributed to risky weight control behaviors such as fasting (Neumark-Sztainer et al. 2006 ) and even to weight gain (Needham et al. 2010 ). Lately, gender differences have also been investigated relative to self-weighing. Klos et al. ( 2012 ) found self-weighing was related to a strong investment in appearance, preoccupation with body shape, and higher weight among women. However, among men self-weighing was related to body satisfaction, investment in health and fitness, and positive evaluation of health.

One interesting departure from weight as a generalized aspect of body concern among women is the examination of wedding-related weight change. Considering the enormous cost of weddings, estimated to average $20,000 in the United States (Wong 2005 ), and the number of wedding magazines, websites, and self-help books on weddings (Villepigue et al. 2005 ), it is not surprising that many brides-to-be want to lose weight for their special occasion. Researchers have shown that an average amount of intended weight loss prior to a wedding is 20 pounds in both the U.S. and Australia with between 12% and 33% of brides-to-be reporting that they had been advised by someone else to lose weight (Prichard & Tiggemann 2009 ). About 50% of brides hoped to achieve weight loss, yet most brides did not actually experience a change in weight (Prichard & Tiggemann, 2014 ); however, when questioned about six months after their weddings, brides indicated that they had gained about four pounds. Those who were told to lose weight by significant others such as friends, family members, or fiancé gained significantly more than those who were not told to do so, suggesting that wedding-related weight change can have repercussions for post wedding body satisfaction and eating behaviors. Regaining weight is typical, given that many people who lose weight regain it with a year or so of losing it.

Drive for muscularity

Researchers have found that body modifications practiced by men are related more to developing muscularity than to striving for a thin body (Cafri et al. 2005a , [ b ]) with particular emphasis placed on developing the upper body areas of chest and biceps (Thompson & Cafri 2007 ). The means to achieve this body modification may include risky behaviors such as excessive exercise and weight training, extreme dieting and dehydration to emphasize musculature, and use of appearance or performance enhancing substances (Hildebrandt et al. 2010 ).

One possible explanation for men’s drive for muscularity may be objectification. While objectification theory was originally proposed to address women’s objectification, it has been extended to men (Hebl et al. 2004 ; Martins et al. 2007 ). These researchers determined that like women, men are objectified in Western and westernized culture and can be induced to self-objectify via revealing clothing manipulations.

Researchers have also examined how men are affected by media imagery that features buff, well-muscled, thin, attractive male bodies as the aesthetic norm. Kolbe and Albanese ( 1996 ) undertook a content analysis of men’s lifestyle magazines and found that most of the advertised male bodies were not “ordinary,” but were strong and hard bodies, or as the authors concluded, objectified and depersonalized. Pope et al. ( 2000 ) found that advertisements for many types of products from cars to underwear utilized male models with body-builder physiques (i.e., exaggerated “6 pack” abdominal muscles, huge chests and shoulders, yet lean); they suggested that men had become focused on muscularity as a cultural symbol of masculinity because they perceived that women were usurping some of their social standing in the workforce. Hellmich ( 2000 ) concurred and suggested that men were overwhelmed with images of half-naked, muscular men and that they too were targets of objectification. Other researchers (e.g., Elliott & Elliott 2005 ; Patterson & England 2000 ) confirmed these findings – that most images in men’s magazines featured mesomorphic, strong, muscular, and hyper-masculine bodies.

How do men respond to such advertising images? Elliott and Elliott ( 2005 ) conducted focus interviews with 40 male college students, ages 18-31, and showed them six different advertisements in lifestyles magazines. They found six distinct types of response, two negative, two neutral, and two positive. Negative responses were (1) homophobic (those who saw the ads as stereotypically homosexual, bordering on pornography), perhaps threatening their own perceived masculinity or (2) gender stereotyping (those who saw the ads as depicting body consciousness or vanity, traits that they considered to be feminine). Neutral responses were (3) legitimizing exploitation as a marketing tool (those who recognized that naked chests or exaggerated body parts were shown and sometimes with no heads, making them less than human, but recognizing that sex sells products), and (4) disassociating oneself from the muscular body ideals shown in the ads (recognizing that the images represented unattainable body types or shapes). Positive responses were (5) admiration of real or attainable “average” male bodies and (6) appreciating some naked advertising images as art, rather than as sexual objects. The researchers concluded that men do see their gender objectified in advertising, resulting in different responses or perceived threats to self.

There is evidence that experiencing these objectified images of the male body is also partially responsible for muscle dysmorphia, a condition in which men become obsessed with achieving muscularity (Leit et al. 2002 ). Understanding contributors to the development of muscle dysmorphia is important as the condition can lead to risky appearance management behaviors such as extreme body-building, eating disorders, and use of anabolic steroids to gain bulk (Bradley et al. 2014 ; Maida & Armstrong 2005 ). In an experiment, Maida and Armstrong exposed 82 undergraduate men to 30 slides of advertisements and then asked them to complete a body image perception test. Men’s body satisfaction was affected by exposure to the images, such that they wanted to be notably more muscular than they were.

Contemporary researchers have found that drive for muscularity is heightened among men when there is a perceived threat to their masculinity such as performance on some task (Steinfeldt et al. 2011 ) or perceiving that they hold some less masculine traits (Blashill, 2011). Conversely, researchers have also suggested that body dissatisfaction and drive for muscularity can be reduced by developing a mindfulness approach to the body characterized by attention to present-moment experiences such as how one might feel during a certain activity like yoga or riding a bicycle (Lavender et al. 2012 ). While the investigation of mindfulness to mitigate negative body image and negative appearance behaviors is relatively new, it is a promising area of investigation.

Tattooing is not necessarily a risky behavior in and of itself, as most tattoo parlors take health precautions with the use of sterile instruments and clean environments. However, research has focused on other risk-taking behaviors that tattooed individuals may engage in, including drinking, smoking, shoplifting, and drug use (Deschesnes et al. 2006 ) as well as and early and risky sexual activity (Koch, Roberts, Armstrong, & Owen, 2007). Tattoos have also been studied as a bodily expression of uniqueness (Mun et al. 2012 ; Tiggemann & Hopkins 2011 ) but not necessarily reflecting a stronger investment in appearance (Tiggemann & Hopkins 2011 ).

Tanning behaviors are strongly associated with skin cancer, just as smoking is associated with lung cancer. In fact, the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization has classified ultraviolet radiation from the sun and tanning devices that emit ultraviolet light as group 1 carcinogens, placing ultraviolet radiation in the same category as tobacco use (World Health Organization, 2012 ). Yet, tanning behaviors are prevalent among many young adults and adolescents causing them to be at increased risk of skin cancer, particularly with indoor tanning devices (Boniol et al. 2012 ; Lostritto et al. 2012 ). Studies of motives for tanning among these populations suggest that greater tanning behavior, for both genders, is correlated with high investment in appearance, media influences, and the influence of friends and significant others (Prior et al. 2014 ). Frequent tanning behaviors in adolescent boys have been related to extreme weight control, substance use, and victimization (Blashill 2013 ). Among young adults, Yoo and Kim ( 2014 ) identified three attitudes toward tanning that were related to tanning behaviors. The attitude that tanning was a pleasurable activity influenced indoor and outdoor tanning behaviors. The attitude that a tan enhances physical attractiveness influenced use of tanning beds and sunless tanning products. The attitude that tanning is a healthy behavior influenced outdoor tanning. They advised that tanning behaviors could be studied further particularly in relation to other risky behaviors.

Body talk and the self

A relatively recent line of investigation concerns the impact of talk about the body on perceptions of self. One would think that communication among friends would typically strengthen feelings of self-esteem and psychological well-being (Knickmeyer et al. 2002 ). Yet, certain types of communication, such as complaining about one’s body or appearance, may negatively impact feelings about the self (Tucker et al. 2007 ), particularly in the case of “fat talk” or disparaging comments about body size, weight, and fear of becoming fat (Ousley et al. 2008 ; Warren et al. 2012 ). Such fat talk has become normative behavior among women and, according to one study, occurs in over 90% of women (Salk & Engeln-Maddox 2011 ) and, according to another study, occurs in women of all ages and body sizes (Martz et al. 2009 ) because women feel pressure to be self-critical about their bodies. More women than men reported exposure to fat talk in their circle of friends and acquaintances and greater pressure to engage in it (Salk & Engeln-Maddox). Thus, fat talk extends body dissatisfaction into interpersonal relationships (Arroyo & Harwood 2012 ).

Sladek et al. ( 2014 ) reported a series of studies that elaborated on the investigation of body talk among men, concluding that men’s body talk has two distinct aspects, one related to weight and the other to muscularity. After developing a scale that showed strong test-retest reliability among college men, they found that body talk about muscularity was associated with dissatisfaction with the upper body, strong drive for muscularity, symptoms of muscle dysmorphia, and investment in appearance. Body talk about weight was associated with upper body dissatisfaction, symptoms of muscle dysmorphia, and disordered eating attitudes and behaviors. They suggest future research in body talk conversations among men and boys of all ages, from different cultural backgrounds, and in different contexts.

Negative body talk among men appears to be less straightforward than that among women (Engeln et al. 2013 ). These researchers reported that men’s body talk included both positive elements and negative elements, while that of women tended to focus on the negative, perhaps reflecting an accepting body culture among men in which they can praise one another as well as commiserate with other men on issues regarding muscularity and weight. Yet, both muscle talk and fat talk were found to decrease state appearance self-esteem and to increase state body dissatisfaction among men.

While the fat talk literature clearly establishes the normative occurrence of this type of communication, as well as establishes the negative impact on the self, the literature has not delved into theoretical explanations for its existence. Arroyo ( 2014 ) has posited a relationship between fat talk and three body image theories (self-discrepancy, social comparison, and objectification), and suggested that degree of body dissatisfaction could serve as a mediating mechanism. Self-discrepancy theory suggests that the discrepancy between one’s actual self and one’s ideal self on any variable, such as weight or attractiveness, motivates people to try to achieve that ideal (Jacobi & Cash 1994 ). Social comparison theory (Festinger 1954 ) explains that we compare ourselves to others on some variable of comparison. When we compare ourselves to others who we believe to be better than ourselves (upward comparison) on this variable (say, for example, thinner or more attractive), we may feel worse about ourselves and engage in both non-risky and risky behaviors such as extreme weight control to try to meet those expectations (Ridolfi et al. 2011 ; Rudd & Lennon 1994 ). Objectification theory, as mentioned earlier in this paper, states that bodies are treated as objects to be evaluated and perceived by others (Szymanski et al. 2011 ); self-objectification occurs when individuals look upon themselves as objects to be evaluated by others.

Arroyo ( 2014 ) surveyed 201 college women to see what effect weight discrepancy, upward comparison, and objectified body consciousness had on fat talk; a mediating variable of body dissatisfaction was investigated. She found that how satisfied or dissatisfied the women did indeed impact how they felt about each variable. Each of the three predictor variables was positively associated with body dissatisfaction and higher body dissatisfaction predicted fat talk. She concluded that fat talk is more insidious than other social behaviors; it is a type of communication that perpetuates negative perceptions among women as well as the attitude that women should be dissatisfied with their bodies. Future research suggestions included examining the impact of downward social comparisons (in which the individual assumes they fare better than peers on the variables of comparison, such as weight), and examining all three phenomena of self-discrepancy, social comparison, and objectification together to determine their cumulative impact on self-disparaging talk.

Negative body talk or fat talk is related to perceptions about the self and to appearance-management behaviors in presenting the self to others. In a sample of 203 young adult women, negative body talk was related to body dissatisfaction and poor self-esteem, and was associated with stronger investment in appearance, distorted thoughts about the body, disordered eating behavior, and depression (Rudiger & Winstead 2013 ). Positive body talk was related to fewer cognitive distortions of the body, high body satisfaction, high self-esteem, and friendship quality. Another form of body talk, co-rumination or the mutual sharing between friends of negative thoughts and feelings, is thought to intensify the impact of body talk. In this same study, co-rumination was related to frequent cognitive distortions of the body as well as disordered eating behaviors, but to high perceived friendship quality. Thus, negative body talk achieved no positive outcomes, yet co-rumination achieved negative outcomes for the self, but positive outcomes for quality of friendship. Thus, future research could tease apart the specific components of the social phenomenon of co-rumination in relation to self-perceptions and appearance management behaviors.

Dress and self as distinct from others

Shifting attention from relationships between the body and self, we move to a discussion of relationships between dress and that aspect of the self that is concerned with answering questions about who we are as distinct and unique individuals (e.g., what type of person am I?). Earlier we shared research about how wearing certain article of dress might impact one’s own physical behaviors. We shift now to sharing research addressing the role dress might play in thinking about oneself as a unique and distinct individual (i.e., self-perceptions). Researchers addressing this topic have utilized Bem’s ( 1972 ) self-perception theory. Bem proposed that similar to the processes we use in forming inferences about others, we can form inferences about ourselves. Bem argues that people’s understanding of their own traits was, in some circumstances, an assessment of their own behaviors. This process was proposed to be particularly relevant to individuals who were responsive to self-produced cues (i.e., cues that arise from an individual’s own behavior or characteristics).

In the 1980s, Kellerman and Laird ( 1982 ) utilized self-perception theory to see whether wearing a specific item of dress (e.g., eye glasses) would influence peoples’ ratings of their own skills and abilities. They conducted an experiment with undergraduate students having them rate themselves on an array of traits when wearing and when not wearing glasses and to complete a hidden figures test. Although there were no significant differences in their performance on the test, the participants’ ratings of their competence and intelligence was higher when wearing glasses than when not. In related research, Solomon and Schopler ( 1982 ) found that both men and women indicated that the appropriateness of their clothing affected their mood.

Studying dress specifically within a workplace context, in the 1990s Kwon ( 1994 ) did not have her participants actually wear different clothing styles but asked them to project how they might think about themselves if they were to wear appropriate versus inappropriate clothing to work. Participants indicated they would feel more competent and responsible if they wore appropriate rather than inappropriate clothing. Similarly, Rafaeli et al. ( 1997 ) a found that employees indicated a link between self-perception and clothing associating psychological discomfort with wearing inappropriate dress for work and increased social self-confidence with appropriate attire. Nearly ten years later, Adomaitis and Johnson ( 2005 ) in a study of flight attendants found that the attendants linked wearing casual uniforms for work (e.g., t-shirt, shorts) with negative self-perceptions (e.g., nonauthoritative, embarrassment, unconfident, unprofessional). Likewise, Peluchette and Karl ( 2007 ) investigating the impact of formal versus casual attire in the workplace found that their participants viewed themselves as most authoritative, trustworthy, productive and competent when wearing formal business attire but as friendliest when wearing casual or business casual attire. Continuing this line of research with individuals employed in the public sector, Karl et al. ( 2013 ) reported participants indicated they felt more competent and authoritative when in formal business or business casual attire and least creative and friendly when wearing casual dress.

As workplace dress has become casual, it would be useful for researchers to uncover any distinctions in casualness that make individuals feel more or less competent, respected, or authoritative. Another aspect of clothing that could be investigated is fit as it might impact self-perceptions or use of makeup.

Guy and Banim ( 2000 ) were interested in how clothing was used as means of self-presentation in everyday life. They implemented three strategies to meet their research objective of investigating women’s relationships to their clothing: a personal account, a clothing diary, and a wardrobe interview. The personal account was a written or tape recorded response to the question “what clothing means to me.” The clothing diary was a daily log kept for two weeks. The wardrobe interview was centered on participants’ current collection of clothing. Participants were undergraduates and professional women representing several age cohorts. The researchers identified three distinct perspectives of self relative to the women’s clothing. The first was labeled “the woman I want to be”. This category of responses revealed that the women used clothing to formulate positive self-projections. Favorite items of clothing in particular were identified as useful in bridging the gap between “self as you would like it to be” and the image actually achieved with the clothing. The second category of responses was labeled “the woman I fear I could be”. This category of responses reflected experiences where clothing had failed to achieve a desired look or resulted in a negative self-presentation. Concern here was choosing to wear clothing with unintentional effects such as highlighting parts of the body that were unflattering or concern about losing the ability to know how to dress to convey a positive image. The last category, “the woman I am most of the time” contained comments indicating the women had a “relationship with clothes was ongoing and dynamic and that a major source of enjoyment for them was to use clothes to realize different aspects of themselves” (p. 321).

Interested in how the self shaped clothing consumption and use, Ogle et al. ( 2013 ) utilized Guy and Banim’s ( 2000 ) views of self to explore how consumption of maternity dress might shape the self during a liminal life stage (i.e., pregnancy). Interviews with women expecting their first child revealed concerns that available maternity dress limited their ability to express their true selves. Some expressed concern that the maternity clothing that was available to them in the marketplace symbolized someone that they did not want to associate with (i.e., the woman I fear I could be). Several women noted they borrowed or purchased used clothing from a variety of sources for this time in their life. This decision resulted in dissatisfaction because the items were not reflective of their selves and if worn resulted in their projecting a self that they also did not want to be. In addition, the women shared that they used dress to confirm their selves as pregnant and as NOT overweight. While some of the participants did experience a disrupted sense of self during pregnancy, others shared that they were able to locate items of dress that symbolized a self-consistent with “the woman I am most of the time”.

Continuing in this line of research, researchers may want to explore these three aspects of self with others who struggle with self-presentation via dress as a result of a lack of fashionable and trendy clothing in the marketplace. Plus-sized women frequently report that they are ignored by the fashion industry and existing offerings fail to meet their need to be fashionable. A recent article in the Huffington Post (“Plus-sized clothing”, 2013 ) noted that retailers do not typically carry plus sizes perhaps due to the misconception that plus-sized women are not trendy shoppers or the idea that these sizes will not sell well. Thus, it may well be that the relationship between dress and self for plus-sized women is frustrating as they are prevented from being able to make clothing choices indicative of their selves “as they would like them to be”.

Priming and self-perception

While several researchers have confirmed that clothing worn impacts thoughts about the self, Hannover and Kühnen ( 2002 ) were interested in uncovering processes that would explain why clothing could have this effect. They began with examining what role priming might have in explaining how clothing impacts self-perceptions. Using findings from social cognition, they argued that clothing styles might prime specific mental categories about one’s self such that those categories that are most easily accessed in a given situation would be more likely to be applied to oneself than categories of information that are difficult to access. Thus, if clothing can be used to prime specific self-knowledge it should impact self-descriptions such that, a person wearing “casual” clothing (e.g., jeans, sweatshirt) should be more apt to describe him or herself using casual terms (e.g., laid-back, uses slang). The researchers had each participant stand in front of a mirror and indicate whether or not specific traits were descriptive of him or herself when wearing either casual or formal clothing (e.g., business attire). The researchers found that when a participant wore casual clothing he or she rated the casual traits as more valid self-descriptions than the formal traits. The reverse was also true. They concluded that the clothing worn primed specific categories of self-knowledge. However, the researchers did not ask participants to what extent they intentionally considered their own clothing when determining whether or not a trait should be applied to them. Yet, as previously noted, Adam and Galinsky ( 2012 ) demonstrated that clothing impacted a specific behavior (attention) only in circumstances where the clothing was worn and the clothing’s meaning was clear. Thus, researchers could test if clothing serves as an unrecognized priming source and if its impact on impression formation is less intentional than typically assumed.

Dress and self in interaction with others

Another area of research within dress and the self involves experience with others and the establishment of meaning. Questions that these researchers are interested in answering include what is the meaning of an item of dress or a way of appearing? Early researchers working in this area have utilized symbolic interactionism as a framework for their research (Blumer 1969 ; Mead 1934 ; Stone 1962 ). The foundational question of symbolic interaction is: “What common set of symbols and understandings has emerged to give meaning to people’s interactions?” (Patton 2002 , p. 112).

There are three basic premises central to symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1969 ). The first premise is that our behavior toward things (e.g., physical objects, other people) is shaped by the meaning that those things have for us. Applied to dress and appearance, this premise means that our behavior relative to another person is influenced by that person’s dress (Kaiser 1997 ) and the meaning that we assign to that dress. The second premise of symbolic interaction is that the meaning of things is derived from social interaction with others (Blumer). This premise indicates that meanings are not inherent in objects, must be shared between individuals, and that meanings are learned. The third premise is that meanings are modified by a continuous interpretative process in which the actor interacts with himself (Blumer). As applied to clothing, this premise suggests that the wearer of an outfit or item of clothing is active in determining the meaning of an item along with the viewer of that item.

Symbolic interactionism posits that the self is a social construction established, maintained, and altered through interpersonal communication with others. While initial work focused on investigating verbal communication as key to the construction of the self, Stone extended communication to include appearance and maintained that “appearance is at least as important in establishment and maintenance of the self” as verbal communication (1962, p. 87).

Stone ( 1962 ) discussed a process of establishing the self in interaction with others. This process included selecting items of dress to communicate a desired aspect of self (i.e., identity) as well as to convey that desired aspect to others. One stage in this process is an individual’s review of his/her own appearance. This evaluation and response to one’s own appearance is called program. One might experience a program by looking in the mirror to assess whether the intended identity expressed through dress is the one that is actually achieved. After this evaluation of one’s appearance, the next stage involves others reacting to an individual’s appearance. This is called a review. Stone contends that when “programs and reviews coincide, the self of the one who appears is validated or established” (p. 92). However, when programs and reviews do not coincide, the announced identity is challenged and “conduct may be expected to move in the direction of some redefinition of the challenged self” (p. 92).

Researchers using this approach in their investigations of dress have used Stone’s ( 1962 ) ideas and applied the concept of review to the experiences of sorority women. Hunt and Miller ( 1997 ) interviewed sorority members about their experiences with using dress to communicate their membership and how members, via their reviews, shaped their sorority appearances. Members reported using several techniques in the review of the appearance of other members as well as in response to their own appearance (i.e., programs). Thus, the researcher’s results supported Stone’s ideas concerning establishment of an identity (as an aspect of self) as a process of program and review.

In an investigation of the meaning of dress, in this instance the meaning of a specific body modification—a tattoo, Mun et al. ( 2012 ) interviewed women of various ages who had tattoos to assess meanings, changes in self-perceptions as a result of the tattoo, and any changes in the women’s behavior as an outcome of being tattooed. To guide their inquiry, the researchers used Goffman’s ( 1959 ) discussion of the concept of self-presentation from his seminal work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life . According to Goffman, on a regular basis people make inferences about the motivations that underlie other people’s behaviors. To make these inferences they use everyday details. Because most people make these inferences, Goffman believed that individuals could purposely control the content of those inferences by controlling their behavior. Included in this behavior was an individual’s dress. These researchers found support for Goffman’s reasoning. Participants shared that their tattoo(s) had meaning and were expressive of their selves, their personal values and interests, important life events (e.g., marriage), and religious/sacred beliefs. The meaning of a tattoo was also dynamic for several participants rather than static. Participants’ self-perceptions were impacted as a result of being tattooed with several participants sharing increases to their confidence and to their perceived empowerment. Individuals who shared a change in behavior primarily noted that they controlled the visibility of their tattoos to others as a method to control how others might respond to them having a tattoo especially within the workplace.

Since an array of body modifications (e.g., piercings, gauging, scarification) are being adopted cross-culturally, investigations of people’s experiences with any of these modifications is fertile area for future researchers interested in the meaning(s) of dress and how dress impacts the self through interaction with others. Researchers may want to investigate men’s experiences with piercing/gauging as well as women’s experiences with body building and other developing forms of body modification. Extreme forms of body piercings (e.g., piercings that simulate corset lacings) and underlying motivations for these body modifications would add to our understanding of relationships between dress and self. The meanings of facial hair to men or body hair removal (partial, total) for both men and women are additional aspects of dress that could be investigated.

Dress and self as influence on consumption

In the aforementioned research by Ogle et al. ( 2013 ), the researchers found that a primary reason their participants were disappointed by the maternity clothing offered through the marketplace was due to a lack of fit between their selves and the clothing styles made available. Thus, it is clear that ideas about the self impact clothing selection and purchase. Sirgy ( 1982 ) proposed self-image product-image congruity theory to describe the process of how people applied ideas concerning the self to their purchasing. The basic assumption of the theory is that through marketing and branding, products gain associated images. The premise of the theory is that products people are motivated to purchase are products with images that are congruent with or symbolic of how they see themselves (i.e., actual self-image) or with how they would like to be (i.e., ideal self-image). They also will avoid those products that symbolize images that are inconsistent with either of these self-images.

Rhee and Johnson ( 2012 ) found support for the self-image product-image congruity relationship with male and female adolescents. These researchers investigated the adolescents’ purchase and use of clothing brands. Participants indicated their favorite apparel brand was most similar to their actual self (i.e., this brand reflects who I am), followed by their social self (i.e., this brand reflects who I want others to think I am), and their desired self (i.e., this brand reflects who I want to be).

Earlier, Banister and Hogg ( 2004 ) conducted research investigating the idea that consumers will actively reject or avoid products with negative symbolic meanings. The researchers conducted group interviews with adult consumers. Their participants acknowledged that clothing items could symbolize more than one meaning depending on who was interpreting the meaning. They also acknowledged that the consumers they interviewed appeared to be more concerned with avoiding consumption of products with negative symbolic images than with consuming products with the goal of achieving a positive image. One participant noted that while attempts to achieve a positive image via clothing consumption may be sub-conscious, the desire to avoid a negative image when shopping was conscious.

Closing remarks

It is clear from our review that interest in the topic of the social psychology of dress is on-going and provides a fruitful area of research that addresses both basic and applied research questions. Although we provided an overview of several key research areas within the topic of the social psychology of dress we were unable to include all of the interesting topics being investigated. There are other important areas of research including relationships between dress and specific social and cultural identities, answering questions about how dress functions within social groups, how we learn to attach meanings to dress, and changing attitudes concerning dress among others. Regardless, we hope that this review inspires both colleagues and students to continue to investigate and document the important influence dress exerts in everyday life.

a These researchers used role theory to frame their investigation.

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Johnson, K., Lennon, S.J. & Rudd, N. Dress, body and self: research in the social psychology of dress. Fashion and Textiles 1 , 20 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40691-014-0020-7

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• Social psychology

Why What You Wear Affects Your Behavior

By Yvonne Milosevic

Dress for success. The clothes make the man.  Dress for the job you want, not the one you have.  You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

As those popular sayings suggest, a smart dresser will likely go farther in life than a sweatsuited slob. Until recently, it seemed our sartorial selections only affected how others perceive us. Now, we’re learning that what we wear can actually affect how we think and behave. A measurable biological change happens when we put on an outfit that makes us feel like a million bucks. And the technical term for this is “enclothed cognition.”

In 2012, b-school researchers Adam Galinsky and Hajo Adam coined the term to describe the systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer’s psychological processes. (This short video sums up the concept nicely.)

Clothes are interesting, says Galinsky, because they simultaneously communicate information to yourself and to other people.

“The clothes we wear seep in to our own cognition, through our own psychological force, but also impacts us through interpersonal constraints or opportunities people give us on our clothes.”

Similarly, a 2015 paper published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science showed that clothing choices influenced performance on cognitive tests. The researchers asked some participants to wear casual clothes and others to wear business attire while taking an intellectual test.

The dressier participants performed much better, particularly on creative and organizational tasks. Wearing business clothes also increased abstract thinking—an important aspect of long-term strategizing.

The takeaway for all of us? We should suit up if we want to become the big-ideas person at the office.

How Enclothed Cognition Affects Shopping Choices

Keisha Cutright, a marketing professor at Duke Fuqua School of Business, co-authored the paper, “The Aesthetics We Wear: How Attire Influences What We Buy.” In it, she describes how what we wear can affect our purchasing decisions .

Shoppers in dressier clothing, such as a dress or blazer, bought nearly 18 percent more items than shoppers in casual outfits, such as T-shirts and flip-flops. Well-dressed shoppers also spent about 6 percent more money than casually dressed shoppers.

When you look sharp, you have more social confidence, Cutright explains. This reduces the anxiety people have about making decisions.

The study did find one environment where well-dressed shoppers spent less than their casual peers. This happened in counterculture stores such as Hot Topics and Zumiez, the paper notes. Because those stores embody an alternative aesthetic, Cutright believes dressier shoppers didn’t feel the same confidence as in mainstream stores.

Does Our ‘Fit Still Matter in the Age of Zoom?

The pandemic ushered in a new work-from-home dress code basically summed up as the Zoom shirt . You know, the “shirt or blouse that’s kept on the back of your desk chair to quickly be presentable for video conferences,” as per Urban Dictionary . That made us wonder whether enclothed cognition still has an effect when we work remotely.

It’s a question Galinsky is currently pondering with two doctoral students at Columbia Business School. Their focus is on the phenomenon of wearing something dressy above the waist and sweats or shorts below screen level for video calls.

“Is there actually an inauthenticity cost or benefit for the fact that we often have these dualistic outfits, and what is that difference, how does that affect people?,” Galinsky asks in the Wall Street Journal .

“Maybe it can make people feel inauthentic. Or maybe it will feel like people have a little secret and that can be kind of a motivating thing, that they’re doing something other people don’t know about.”

Wearing full-on formal clothes for Zoom meetings feels like overkill for most of us. But there is something to be said for making a little effort to look put together during the workday. Those morning rituals and routines from yesteryear (which include changing out of PJs) go a long way toward helping us stay productive and calm in a chaotic world.

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Styling the Self: Clothing Practices, Personality Traits, and Body Image Among Israeli Women

Tali stolovy.

1 Academic College of Society and the Arts, Netanya, Israel

2 Emili Sagol Creative Arts Therapies Research Center, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

Associated Data

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Research has shown that women tend to use clothes to present or disguise their bodies and that clothing practices can be predicted by body image. This study explored the relationships between clothing practices, personality traits, and body image among Israeli women, using the Big Five personality traits model (NEO-FFI) and a body image measure (MBSRQ) to explore clothing styles and practices among Israeli women ( N = 792, Mean age = 42.19). It found that women with more openness to experience (OR = 1.8; IC 95%: 1.05–3.0), who seek fashion (OR = 2.05; IC 95%: 1.37–3.05) and individuality (OR = 3.96; IC 95%: 2.46–6.3) are more likely to exhibit an urban, sophisticated style of dress. These women are less motivated by comfort (OR = 0.49; IC 95%: 0.31–0.77) and camouflage (OR = 2.05; IC 95%: 1.37–3.05), that are associated with casual, minimalist style of dress. This study indicates that openness to experience may foster body-positive clothing practices. In this way, their choice of clothing can help women overcome objectification and cultural body-ideal pressures, promoting self-validation and mastery.

Introduction

Most psychological research on clothing focuses on social and cultural perceptions of the clothing that people choose to wear. It is conducted primarily in workplaces and reflects how people perceive and judge others' professionality and reliability based on their clothes (e.g., Rehman et al., 2005 ; Howlett et al., 2015 ). The effect of clothes on the wearer is thus examined in the context of the relationship between formal or informal style of dress and the person's self-perception in the workplace (Peluchette et al., 2006 ).

There is a paucity of research on the idiosyncratic meanings of clothes and the emotional functions performed by daily choices of clothing—even though earlier theorists propose that clothing is the external manifestation of the self (Cooley, 1902 ; Flugel, 1930 ; Sontag and Schlater, 1982 ; James, 2007 ). Expressions such as “the second skin” and “the visible self” suggest both the physical contiguity between clothing and the body and the psychological proximity of clothing to the self.

Sontag and Lee ( 2004 ) define the psychological closeness of clothing as determined by the extent to which clothing is (1) perceived as one with the self or as a component of the self; (2) recognized as an aspect of appearance by which the self is established and validated; (3) recognized as a significant symbol of one's identity, mood, or attitude; (4) perceived as an expression of self-regard or self-worth, (5) recognized as an element of an affective response to self-evaluation; or (6) related to body cathexis.

The psychological effect of clothes on the wearers themselves was demonstrated by Adam and Galinsky's ( 2012 ) research, which found that simply donning a white lab coat increased performance on attention-related tasks and selective attention. The researchers coined the term “enclothed cognition,” which differs from embodied cognition because the link between physical experience and its symbolic meaning is indirect: it is the item of clothing that carries the symbolic meaning.

This concept of clothing's symbolic and emotional may shed light on the question: Why do people in the same social cultural environment choose certain clothing styles and not others? Kwon's ( 1991 ) research suggests that individuals' clothing choices can be a reflection of how they feel about themselves, and not only about how they want others to feel about them. Other studies have shown that individuals reinforce their mood and express their feelings through their clothing (Kallstrom, 2009 ). Mood can be altered because the clothes selected may be perceived as fashionable, enhancing individuality and confidence, or providing physical comfort (Kang et al., 2013 ). The sample of female shoppers studied by Tiggemann and Lacey ( 2009 ) primarily chose clothes for the positive functions of assurance, fashion, and comfort.

To date, psychological research on dress and clothing practices has focused almost exclusively on Western women. One rationale for this focus is that Western men have been shown to express less interest in clothing and fashion than women; millennials of all genders are likely to enjoy shopping, but women are still more involved with fashion than men (Pentecost and Andrews, 2010 ). However, men have come under increasing pressure to conform to the cultural ideal of a lean, well-toned, muscular body, and they, too, manage their appearance and body image through clothes (Frith and Gleeson, 2004 ).

The unique relationship of Western women to clothes develops on the background of their socialization into roles that are preoccupied with appearance and how others see them. Women may use clothes to display or disguise their bodies. Clothing thus affects the degree to which women are objectified and appraised (for more information on objectification theory, see Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997 ; Heflick and Goldenberg, 2009 ). Kwon and Parham ( 1994 ) found that women selected clothes more for camouflage and less for individual self-expression when they felt “fat” than when they felt thinner. Higher body mass index (BMI) and body dissatisfaction were related to the use of clothing as camouflage. Tiggemann and Andrew's ( 2012 ) findings also show interrelationships between women's attitudes toward clothing and their attitude toward their bodies.

Body image is a multidimensional construct that includes perceptual, attitudinal, and behavioral components, and dressing one's body is an intentional behavior. In other words, how individuals feel about and perceive their bodies affect how they manage their appearance through their choice of clothing (Rudd and Lennon, 2000 ; Jung et al., 2001 ). Hence, clothing practices can be predicted by body image (Tiggemann and Lacey, 2009 ).

Previous research on body image has also addressed personality traits. Personality is the characteristic manner in which people feel, think and behave. There is still some debate regarding the number of trait dimensions, but most scholars accept that there are at least five major dimensions of trait personality (Allen and Walter, 2016 ). The Five Factor Model (FFM) and Big Five Model (BFM) of personality define five higher-order domains: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness (Goldberg, 1990 ; Costa and McCrae, 1992 ; Oliver and Srivastava, 1995 ). People who score higher on Neuroticism tend to be more self-conscious (Costa and McCrae, 1992 ), place greater importance on how they look (Davis et al., 2001 ), and are more likely to compare themselves to attractive others (Roberts and Good, 2010 ). Neuroticism was found to correlate to higher body surveillance, lower appearance control beliefs (Tylka, 2004 ), and higher body shame (Miner-Rubino et al., 2002 ). Extraversion was associated with a higher appreciation of one's own body and lower body dissatisfaction (Swami et al., 2012 ). Extraverts are less reserved, more assertive, and tend to be more talkative (Costa and McCrae, 1992 ), and these characteristics might place such individuals at a lower risk of negative body image. People who score high on extraversion also experience more positive emotions (Steel et al., 2008 ) and are less sensitive to social threat (Wilt and Revelle, 2008 ), meaning extraverted individuals might be less vulnerable to sociocultural factors that contribute to negative body image (Kvalem et al., 2006 ; Allen and Walter, 2016 ).

People who score high on conscientious tend to endorse societal conventions (Roberts et al., 2014 ) but are also characterized by high levels of confidence and therefore might be less receptive to exposure to idealized physical appearance (Roberts and Good, 2010 ).

Swami et al. ( 2012 ) reported that body appreciation was positively correlated to conscientiousness, as well as agreeableness. People who score higher on agreeableness tend to endorse traditional values (Roccas et al., 2002 ) and therefore assumed to assign greater importance to physical appearance, putting them at a higher risk of a negative body image (Allen and Walter, 2016 ). Nonetheless, Miner-Rubino et al. ( 2002 ) found that body shame was negatively correlated to agreeableness. All these studies were carried out using exclusively female samples.

People who score higher on openness tend to value intellectual and emotional autonomy, acceptance, and cultivation of diversity (Roccas et al., 2002 ), and therefore might be more open to different body image ideals putting them at a lower risk of negative body image (Allen and Walter, 2016 ).

Given that body image is correlated with personality traits and that clothing serves psychological functions (e.g., Tiggemann and Lacey, 2009 ) and is a reflection or expression of an individual's identity (Sontag and Lee, 2004 ), this study explores the relationship between clothing practices (i.e., styles of dress and clothing functions), personality traits, and body image among women. It also expands the commonly used formal and informal categories to include a wider array of clothing styles. My main research hypothesis is that clothing practices are related to personality traits and can be predicted by body image.

Study Design

This study used a convenience sample that completed an online survey that was distributed via Facebook social media platform. Informed consent was provided by all participants at the beginning of the online survey. Participants were allowed to terminate the survey at any time they desired. The survey was anonymous, and confidentiality of information was assured.

The study included women all across Israel, the invitation for participants was repeated five times on social media and one time on a popular morning TV show. The questionnaire consisted of 4 parts: (1) socio-demographic data, (2) function of clothing scale, (3) MBSRQ—Body image, (4) NEO-FFI-Personality traits. It took about 15 min to complete the survey.

Participants

The call to participate described the aim of the study and invited women to respond and complete the survey. Inclusion criteria were being over 18 years old, with no exclusion criteria. A total of 792 women completed surveys were received.

Instruments

Function of clothing measure.

Function of clothing were assessed using items developed by Kwon and Parham ( 1994 ). This scale measures the choice of clothing for its comfort, camouflage, assurance, fashion. and individuality functions. Its 20 items are assessed on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all agree) to 5 (very much agree). Kang, Johnson, and Kim also used this scale in their 2013 study. It was translated to Hebrew using a translation/back translation procedure by the author and a native English speaker. In the present sample, Cronbach's alpha was 0.75. In addition to these assessments, the participants were asked to define their clothing style by choosing one of the following five options to best describe their wardrobe: (1) casual style (jeans, pants, t-shirts or cotton shirts, minimalist styling); (2) romantic style (skirts, dresses, soft fabrics, floral patterns, bohemian style, clothing that is stereotypically perceived as “feminine”); (3) dramatic style (unusual and unique outfits, bright colors and color combinations, may sometimes be tight or revealing); (4) classic style (formal clothing, conventional and representative outfits); and (5) urban or eclectic style (different combinations of all styles, mix and match, playful style of dress with combinations of low- and high-priced clothing, frequent use of accessories).

Body Image Measure

The Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire (MBSRQ) is a well-validated self-report inventory for the assessment of body image that measures overall body image and satisfaction with body shape (Cash, 1994 ). This 34-item measure has five dimensions: Appearance Evaluation, Appearance Orientation, Overweight Preoccupation, Self-Classified Weight, and the Body Areas Satisfaction Scale (BASS). This study used all the dimensions except for the BASS subscale. Each item was scored from 1 = very dissatisfied to 5 = very satisfied. The questionnaire is characterized by a reliability of α = 0.78, and the Hebrew version was found reliable with Cronbach's alpha of 0.86 (Shaiovitz, 2014 ). In the present sample, Cronbach's alpha was 0.66.

Personality Traits Measure

The NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI; Costa and McCrae, 1992 ; Hebrew version by Etzion and Laski, 1998 ) consists of 60 items; each of the Big Five personality traits is assessed based on 12 items: neuroticism (e.g., “I often feel inferior to others”), extraversion (e.g., “I like to have a lot of people around me”), agreeableness (e.g., “I try to be courteous to everyone I meet”), openness to experience (e.g., “I have a lot of intellectual curiosity”), and conscientiousness (e.g., “I keep my belongings clean and neat”). The response format used a 4-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 (completely disagree) to 4 (completely agree). Prior research has found good cross-cultural validity of this measure in Israel (Etzion and Laski, 1998 ). In the present sample, Cronbach's alpha was 0.71.

Sociodemographic and Additional Variables

Each participant was asked to indicate her age, height and weight, country of birth, marital status, religious affiliation, educational level, health and financial status, and occupation.

Statistical Analyses

All participants filled out the research questionnaires online through the Qualtrics website. The data were analyzed through SPSS 19.0 software. The relationship between clothing styles, clothing functions, body image and background data were analyzed using Pearson's correlations and chi-square tests. A series of one-way ANOVA analyses were used to explore the relationships of clothing style preference groups (casual, romantic, dramatic, classic, and urban) to the Big Five personality traits, body image, and functions of clothing. Finally, backwards stepwise logistic regressions were preformed to explore the effect of the different variables on each style of dress, compared with the other styles of dress.

Ethical Considerations

Data were collected considering general ethical principles of Emily Sagol Creative art therapies research center in Haifa University. Because this concerns a study in which only adult women participate on their own free will and after informed consent, based on the ICH-GCP principles ( https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/scientific-guideline/ich-e-6-r2-guideline-good-clinical-practice-step-5_en.pdf ) ethical approval was not sought for the present study. Informed consent was provided by all participants at the beginning of the online survey. Participants were allowed to terminate the survey at any time they desired. The survey was anonymous, and confidentiality of information was assured.

The sample comprised 792 women from urban and rural areas in Israel; the participants' ages ranged from 19 to 74 (M = 42.1, SD = 10.32). Descriptive data is presented in Table 1 . As can be seen, about two-thirds of the sample were married women ( N = 507, 64%) and mothers ( N = 410, 51.8%). More than 80% had academic degrees ( N = 556, 70.2%). Most of the sample considered themselves as non-religious ( N = 572, 82.9%), and nearly half perceived themselves to be financially secure ( N = 394, 49.7%). Chi square tests found no association between descriptive data and the main research variables.

Basic information of the sample ( N = 792).

The Big Five Personality Traits, Functions of Clothing, and Clothing Style

The pattern of correlations among the Big Five personality traits and clothing functions is shown in Table 2 . As can be seen, extroversion is moderately correlated with using clothes for assurance ( r = 0.30, p < 0.001). Openness to experience is positively correlated with assurance ( r = 0.31, p < 0.001) and individuality ( r = 0.31, p < 0.001) and negatively correlated with camouflage ( r = −0.24, p < 0.001). The remaining correlations have a weak effect below r = 0.20 (see Table 2 ).

Pearson's correlations among the Big Five personality traits, body image dimensions, and clothing functions ( N = 792).

A one-way between-subjects ANOVA was conducted to compare the effect of the Big Five personality traits on clothing style preferences. As seen in Table 3 , there was a weak to moderate significant effect of extroversion [ F (4, 624) = 5.76, p = 0.0001], conscientiousness [ F (1, 624) = 6.80, p = 0.0001], agreeableness [ F (4, 624) = 4.86, p = 0.001], and openness to experience [ F (1, 624) = 7.38, p = 0.0001] on clothing styles. Post-hoc analyses using the Tukey post-hoc criterion for significance indicated that the average score of extroversion was significantly lower in the casual style condition (M = 3.45, SD = 0.74) than in the urban style condition (M = 3.8, SD = 0.63).

One-way ANOVA for testing the Big Five personality traits and clothing styles ( N = 792).

The average score of conscientiousness was higher in the classic style condition (M = 4.04, SD = 0.53) than in the dramatic style (M = 3.6, SD = 0.74) and the casual style (M = 3.83, SD = 0.56). The average score of agreeableness was lower in the dramatic style condition (M = 3.47, SD = 0.75) than all other styles of dress; casual style (M = 3.93, SD = 0.49), romantic style (M = 3.92, SD = 0.58), urban style (M = 3.88, SD = 0.53), and classic style (M = 3.89, SD = 0.59).

The average score of openness to experience was higher in the urban style condition (M = 3.9, SD = 0.54) than in the casual style condition (M = 3.62, SD = 0.59) and the classic style condition (M = 3.64, SD = 0.50).

Body Image, Functions of Clothing, and Clothing Style

The pattern of correlations between body image dimensions and clothing functions is given in Table 2 . As can be seen, appearance evaluation correlates negatively with using clothes for camouflage ( r = −0.58, p < 0.001) and positively with other clothing functions: assurance ( r = 0.34, p < 0.001), fashion ( r = 0.28, p < 0.001), and individuality ( r = 0.30, p < 0.001). Appearance orientation is positively correlated with assurance ( r = 0.43, p < 0.001), fashion ( r = 0.40, p < 0.001), and individuality ( r = 0.37, p < 0.001). Weight preoccupation is positively correlated with camouflage ( r = 0.30, p < 0.001). Weight classification is positively correlated with camouflage ( r = 0.45, p < 0.001). The remaining correlations have a weak effect below r = 0.20 (see Table 2 ).

A one-way between-subjects ANOVA was conducted to compare the effect of body image dimensions on clothing style preferences. As seen in Table 4 , there was a significant moderate effect of appearance orientation [ F (4,635) = 8.24, p = 0.0001] and appearance evaluation [ F (1,635) = 13.35, p = 0.0001] on clothing styles. Post-hoc analyses using the Tukey post-hoc criterion for significance indicated that the average score of appearance evaluation was lower in the casual style condition (M = 3.2, SD = 0.78) than in the urban style condition (M = 3.63, SD = 0.72). The average score of appearance orientation was higher in the urban style condition (M = 3.71, SD = 0.50) than in the dramatic (M = 3.25, SD = 0.71) and casual styles (M = 3.37, SD = 0.56).

One-way ANOVA for testing body image dimensions and clothing styles ( N = 792).

To further understand the relationship between clothing style preferences and body image, one more ANOVA was performed. A one-way between-subjects ANOVA to compare the effect of clothing functions on clothing style preference. As seen in Table 5 , there was a significant moderate effect of comfort [ F (4, 662) = 12.8, p = 0.000], camouflage [ F (4, 662) = 8.1, p = 0.000], assurance [ F (4, 662) = 13.04, p = 0.000], fashion [ F (4, 662) = 39.0, p = 0.000], and individuality [ F (4, 662) = 44.67, p = 0.000] on the choice of clothing styles. Post-hoc analyses using the Tukey post-hoc criterion for significance indicated that the average score of all clothing functions was different in the casual style condition than in other clothing style conditions. Most relevant in the context of body image, the average score of camouflage was higher in the casual style (M = 3.32, SD = 0.71) than in the urban style condition (M = 2.89, SD = 0.71). The average score of assurance was lower in the casual style condition (M = 3.36, SD = 0.63) than in the urban style condition (M= 3.77, SD = 0.65).

One-way ANOVA for testing clothing functions and clothing styles ( N = 792).

Finally, backwards stepwise logistic regressions were preformed to explore the effect of the different variables on each style of dress. Significant results were found in the regression model for predicting choices of urban style vs. casual style.

As seen in Table 6 , variables that predict urban style of dress, vs. casual style, are openness (beta = 0.58; p = 0.03), fashion (beta = 0.72; p = 0.00) individuality (beta = 1.38; p = 0.00), lower levels of comfort (beta = −0.71; p = 0.00), and lower camouflage (beta = −0.67, p = 0.00). Thus, women who are more open to experience (OR = 1.8; IC 95%: 1.05–3.0), who seek fashion (OR = 2.05; IC 95%: 1.37–3.05) and individuality (OR = 3.96; IC 95%: 2.46–6.3) are more likely to exhibit an urban style of dress. These women are less motivated by comfort (OR = 0.49; IC 95%: 0.31–0.77) and camouflage (OR = 2.05; IC 95%: 1.37–3.05) when they chose their clothing style.

Multiple logistic regression analysis to predict urban style vs. casual style of dress ( N = 378).

Likelihood Ratio test: χ 2 (5) = 193.32, p < 0.0001 .

This study explored the relationships between clothing practices to personality traits and body image among Israeli women. Overall, the results supported the hypothesis that clothing practices are related to personality traits and can be predicted by body image.

Using the Big Five personality traits model, this study found that conscientiousness was related with a classic style of dress, defined as formal, conventional, and representative clothing. The Big Five model describes people with high levels of conscientiousness as organized, reliable, punctual and neat (Costa and McCrae, 1992 ), and wearing formal clothing was found to support a self-perception of neatness, cultivation, and restraint (Hannover and Kühnen, 2002 ). This research also found conscientiousness to be negatively correlated with camouflage and positively correlated with assurance, fashion, and individuality. These findings correspond with previous findings that people who wear formal clothes perceive themselves as highly competent, trustworthy, and authoritative (Peluchette and Karl, 2007 ).

This study found that agreeableness was lowest among women who identified with the dramatic style, defined as unusual and unique style of dress. The Big Five model describes people with high levels of agreeableness as warm, kind a cooperative. They are more motivated by solidarity than assertiveness or excitement seeking (Costa and McCrae, 1992 , 2009 ).

Extroversion was related to an urban style of dress, defined as an eclectic and playful style characterized by creative combinations of clothes. These findings correspond with the Big Five model perception of extroverts as sociable, people-oriented, active, optimistic, and fun loving (Costa and McCrae, 1992 ). Moreover, extroverts were found to prefer exciting fashion brands that are typically perceived as active, adventurous, and cool (Mulyanegara et al., 2009 ), characterizations that resonate with the definition of urban style.

The present research indicates that camouflage is a function characteristic of the casual clothing style, a minimalist style featuring jeans and t-shirts. It was correlated with high levels of camouflage, low levels of extroversion, and low openness to experience, suggesting that women who identified with this style were the most introverted and conventional thinking among the research sample.

Openness to experience was highest among women who identified with the urban style. The Big Five model describes people with high levels of openness to experience as being curious, creative, and untraditional, and as having broad interests (Costa and McCrae, 1992 ). Women who identified with the urban style were more open-minded and creative than those wearing the casual style. Moreover, body image played an important role in the choice between the urban and the casual style.

The final logistic regressions reinforced this distinction; When comparing the prediction to choose urban vs. casual style, women who choose urban are less preoccupied by the need to camouflage their bodies or what they define as comfortable clothing. They are interested in fashion and individuality, i.e., using clothes as a tool for self-expression, rather than an adjustment to cultural beauty ideals.

Women who identified with the urban style, a creative and expressive style of dress, were more likely to feel confident with their bodies. They also tended to be extroverted, which echoes research that shows extroversion to be correlated with a higher appreciation of one's own body (Swami et al., 2012 ). In contrast, women who identified with the casual style were distinguished by higher levels of camouflage and lower assurance. This corresponds with Trautmann et al. ( 2007 ) findings that women who were more dissatisfied with their bodies were more likely to camouflage their bodies with dark-colored and baggy tops, and avoid wearing revealing, brightly colored, or tightly fitting clothing.

The present research reinforces previous findings regarding the relationship between body image and clothing practices. Appearance evaluation was negatively correlated with camouflage and appearance orientation was positively correlated with fashion. That is, the better women feel about their bodies, the higher is their ability to use clothes for self-expression and enjoyment. These findings align with Tiggemann and Andrew's ( 2012 ) research on the interrelationships between women's attitudes toward clothing and their attitude toward their bodies.

The present study showed that weight preoccupation and weight classification correlated with camouflage. These results are in line with Kwon and Parham ( 1994 ) findings that women select clothes more for camouflage and less for individuality when feeling “fat.” Since there were no BMI differences among the different groups, and BMI was not a predictor to any style of dress, the urban style seems to foster body-positive clothing practices. As indicated by the logistic regression, openness to experience may play an important role. Openness to experience was estimated to increase the odds to choose an urban clothing style (vs. casual style) by 80%.

Openness to experience is associated with non-conformity (Feist and Brady, 2004 ), suggesting that these women are able to enjoy and play with their clothes despite Western society's pressures to conform to a strict beauty standard and conceal possible “imperfections.”

Openness to experience is also related to psychological flexibility, including body image flexibility. Having a flexible body image decreases body dissatisfaction and increases flexible responses to body-related thoughts and feelings (Sandoz et al., 2013 ). A lack of flexibility may then drive women's tendency to choose concealing clothes when they see themselves as “fat” (Trautmann et al., 2007 ).

It is likely that women who identified with the urban style are more flexible both in their body image and their clothing practices. The urban style group may represent what Cash ( 2008 ) defines as “flexible groomers,” individuals characterized by a playful and enjoyable use of clothing styles, fabrics, colors, cosmetics, hairstyles, jewelry, and fragrances. Flexible groomers use grooming for mastery and pleasure, and not in a rigid effort to maintain positive appearance.

Conclusions

This study highlights the relationship between clothing practices and body image among women. It indicates that personality traits play a role in clothing choices, which suggests that one's clothing is a kind of manifestation of the self (e.g., Sontag and Lee, 2004 ).

Openness to experience may foster body-positive clothing practices that are oriented toward self-expression and individuality rather than camouflage. In this sense, their choice of clothing can help women overcome objectification and cultural body-ideal pressures (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997 ) by enabling them to dress for their own validation and pleasure. This can be used in clinical practice by encouraging women to experience and play with their clothes—thereby facilitating a more flexible body image and lessening their rigid perception of clothing practices.

The ever-increasing cultural pressure to attain the ideal body highlights the importance of understanding the role of clothing practices in fostering positive body image. Moreover, the relationship between clothing practices and personality traits sheds light on the psychology of dress, a generally neglected field of research.

Limitations

The shortcomings of this research are the following: First, the definition of clothing styles was designed for this research, and subjects were asked to identify only one style of dress that is most relevant to them. This self-report measure was the most reliable measure found for this research, based on the existing research in this field of knowledge, but its reliability is limited. Second, the research is based on a convenience sample, only female subjects were included, and they were predominantly non-religious, financially secure, and well-educated. Further research is needed to understand clothing practices among broader populations.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

Ethical approval was not provided for this study on human participants because all subjects voluntarily and willingly filled self report online questionnaires. Written informed consent for participation was not required for this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Author Contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Fashion and Positive Psychology: Interactions Between Clothing, Mood, Self-Concept, and Well Being

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Clothing and human behavior from a social cognitive framework Part I: Theoretical perspectives

1989, Clothing and Textiles Research Journal

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We select clothes that we’re purchasing and wearing according to the meaning we believe them to have, or the messages we believe them to send. But what are psychological consequences of clothing, and how does clothing express something about the user? To assess the state of knowledge about the communicative nature of fashion, the aim of this review was to provide a concise and succinct literature overview of over twenty empirical studies of the above-mentioned concept. The psychology behind clothing is classified into 3 thematic categories in this paper: a) the meaning of colors in clothing psychology; b) the socio-psycological impact of clothing; and c) gender (in)equality regarding clothing. Finally the last chapter brings a concise study of a few recent fashion shows, brands and trends. It is doubtless that both clothing and appearance serve as an important socializing influence and a form of communication.

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Students About Atrium: How Clothes Shape Our Perception and Self-Image

Discover the profound connection between what you wear and how you feel. This article delves deep into the psychology behind clothing choices and their impact on one's self-perception.

Have you ever put on a crisp suit or a flattering dress and felt an instant boost of confidence? Or perhaps you've donned a cozy hoodie and felt an immediate sense of comfort? The clothes we choose to wear aren't just about fashion or utility; they play a significant role in our self-perception and how we present ourselves to the world. This article, titled ' Students About Atrium ', delves into the intricate connection between our clothing choices and our psyche, exploring theories such as the Enclothed Cognition Theory and examining the psychology behind why we wear what we wear. So, let's begin this intriguing journey and understand the profound impact of our wardrobe selections.

Clothes Shape Perception

It's often said that clothes make the man, but it might be more accurate to say that clothes make the mood. Numerous studies suggest that our attire can significantly affect our cognitive processes and the way we perceive ourselves. For instance, wearing formal clothes is often associated with feelings of power and competency, while casual attire can make one feel relaxed and at ease. But it's not just about the type of clothing; even the colors we choose to wear can elicit specific emotions and moods.

Enclothed Cognition Theory

You might be wondering, "What drives the relationship between our clothes and our mindset?" Enter the Enclothed Cognition Theory. This theory posits that the symbolic meaning of our attire and the physical experience of wearing them come together to shape our psychological processes. To put it simply: when you wear a white coat and believe it belongs to a doctor, you're likely to be more attentive—a phenomenon explored by Dr. Adam Galinsky.

FAQ About Clothes

When it comes to clothing and its influence on our psyche, many questions arise. Let's address some of the most common inquiries.

Do clothes truly affect our confidence?

Yes, clothes can indeed influence our self-esteem and how we perceive ourselves. Think about the last time you wore something that made you feel good; your posture might have improved, and you likely felt more positive and assertive.

How does color play into this?

Colors have their own psychology. For instance, red is often associated with power and passion, while blue can evoke feelings of calm and trustworthiness. Thus, the colors we wear can subtly influence our emotions and perceptions.

Dos and Don'ts

Understanding the impact of clothes on our psyche, here are some dos and don'ts to consider:

Do: Wear what makes you feel good

Your comfort and confidence should always come first. If you feel great in an outfit, that positivity will radiate outward.

Don't: Blindly follow fashion trends

While it's fun to experiment with new styles, don't feel pressured to adopt a trend that doesn't resonate with you. Your authenticity is your greatest asset.

With such a vast topic, there are bound to be numerous queries. Here, we answer some frequently asked questions surrounding the subject of clothing and psychology.

How do baggy clothes affect our psychology?

Baggy clothes can provide a sense of comfort and security, much like being wrapped in a blanket. However, consistently wearing oversized attire might also be linked to wanting to hide or shield oneself from the outside world.

What's the reasoning behind uniforms in schools and jobs?

Uniforms aim to promote equality and reduce distractions. By having everyone wear the same outfit, the emphasis shifts from appearance to performance and abilities.

Final Thoughts:

In conclusion, our clothing choices are a reflection of who we are, our mood, and how we want the world to perceive us. By understanding the profound psychological impacts of what we wear, we can make more informed decisions about our wardrobe, ensuring that our attire aligns with our desired self-image and mood. So, next time you stand in front of your closet, remember the power of clothes and choose wisely.

Useful Resources:  https://thursd.com/articles/12-common-mistakes-for-writing-an-essay

Home Essay Examples Business Dress Code

The Influence Of Fashion On Human Behaviour

• Category Business
• Subcategory Human Resource Management
• Topic Dress Code

This article will focus on how fashion will influence human behavior. The first argument is one dress code affects how they feel about themselves, and discuss how it effects how does fashion influence self-perception and behavior. The second argument is one’s dressing can highly determine other people’s impression. In this part will mainly focus on the effect that dress does on other’s behaviour and introduce the colour effect in fashion.

Introduction

Fashion is a practice or style that everyone wants to be associated with mostly in dressing, accessories, makeup and furniture. It involves the trending habit of style in which a person dresses. The dressing is all about fashion. Fashion involves the creation of different cloth, makeup, footwear and accessory designs. Fashion involves clothing and the study of clothing. Fashion is all about the latest and the most popular styles of dressing. One’s fashion expresses who the person is, his or her character, personality, culture and beliefs, this makes fashion a way of communicating. Dressing according to Joanne Eicher 1992, is the general order of the outward body modification and all materials that have been applied in modifying the outward body look. Body modifications are any changes or foreign materials used by people to make their look appealing. It may include putting on clothes, changing of skin colour by use of cosmetics and application of deodorants. Dress code changes how one looks, tastes and smells, sounds and feels. People’s dress code communicates something to the public. The dressing has been a behavior that has been adapted in the whole globe.

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Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior of human being. It studies the human personality, emotions, motivation and attitudes. Psychology aims at bringing out how people in a given society act, think, and feel about a given concept. Social psychology involves the study of the behavior of individuals in a given social context. This study helps in answering questions on why people think, feel and act the way they do as per other people’s actual or implied image and presence. Psychology of fashion, therefore, is concerned with the study of how people’s choice of dressing is seen and judged by others. It brings out how people think and feel about a certain fashion trend. It also gives reasons as to why people chose to adapt a given style of dressing and why it changes as time goes by. The social psychology of dress is about answering questions that are concerned with how people dress in relation to the beliefs, attitudes, feelings and behavior of the society they are situated in. the social psychology of dress brings out why and how an individual’s behavior is influenced and shaped by other society members. One’s dress code may directly or indirectly affect the behavior of self or the behavior of others. Dressing is key in any social interactions. This is because dress codes can be used in differentiating others from the rest and identifying others, for example, those in high social positions like politicians. Group members can be differentiated from the rest due to their dress code and hence a dress code determines how society members interact with each other (Choi, 2013, p.115).

Fashion Affect Self-perceptions and Behavior

Clothing affects people’s behavior, attitude, personality, mood, confidence, and even the way interacts with others. How one feels also influences ones dressing choice. A person’s fashion style indicates the hidden culture, attitude and gender. Fashion is part of the expression of one’s growth, especially during adolescence. During adolescence, people want to express themselves to show their growth and values. As one develops psychologically as people find their sense of belonging and a way to fit in the society through dressing. For example, wearing power clothing, like tailored jackets, will bolster confidence, have a feeling of being a success. Helping become better negotiators and more abstract thinkers. Wearing formal office clothes and organized clothes allows people to maintain a good attitude to conduct business. Wearing luxury provides a sense of self-esteem and hedonic feelings, for example, satisfaction and power. It will change the self-identification, ideal self and social comparison from the wearer.

Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky introduced the term ‘Enclothed cognition’ which describe the impacts that clothes have on the wearer’s psychological processes, abilities. There are some researches support the claim that clothing can influence self-emotion, performance, and mental psyches.

Michael L. Slepian, Simon N. Ferber and other two authors had an experiment which required participants to change into formal or casual clothing before enhancing abstract cognitive processing. This study provides evidence that people who wearing formal suit have higher action identification level and greater category inclusiveness. Formal dressing was associated with more abstract thinking, which is significant in creativity and long-term strategic planning.

In addition, informal dressing will influence negotiations. A research report published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in December 2014 shows that three groups of males who wear ordinary clothes, suit and sportswear participated in an experiment, which included negotiating with partners. The result shows that people in formal wear made more profits than the other two groups and also the people in casual wear had lower testosterone levels.

Adam and Galinsky (2012) point out clothes will make influence of owner’s behavior when it has symbiotic meaning. The experiment has three groups of people, the first group wear a white coat which been describe as a painter’s coat and other group wear a white coat which been describe as medical doctor’s lab coat. These two groups participated in a task and the result has shown that the group two which the white coat was described as medical lab coat had greater performance.

Therefore, experiments have shown that changing clothes can lead to a temporary change in identity, the way of reaction. Galinsky points out that clothes will invade people’s body, thought, and change the wearer’s mind into a different state. When wearing a piece of symbolic garment, it will involuntarily adopt some features associated with it. Research shows that clothes can improve our performance. Wearing symbolic clothing is not only an act but also a psychological experience. Clothing is a tool, a tool that can change human psychology.

Fashion Effect on Other’s Behavior

One’s dressing can highly determine other people’s impression. Research has shown that 81% of our dress code communicate competence, power and intelligence. 67% of our dressing indicate one’s character, sociability and mood. Other research includes that of Dorothy Behling and Elizabeth Williams that focused on the impression of intelligence and scholastic ability of high school tutors and learners. They found out that when students put on jeans, they were perceived to have low intelligence levels and low scholastic abilities as compared to when they are in jeans. In another research, it was seen that in an interview, dressing did not prove one’s competence and creativity of the job applicants. Dressing highly implicates the behavior of the observers, for example, the way one dressed in a given shop influenced how fast one is served by the shop attendants.

The colour of dressing often affects the viewing of other people. Although colour is not a particular style of clothing, it did same the cognitive effects which can be applied to clothing. For example, an ingrained proception of red is red reflect danger, alertness or awareness. Some studies found that red was associated with worry, distraction and decreasing self-concentration. In another experiment said that red colour associated with the attractiveness (Roberts, Owen & Havlicek 2010). Blue is usually associated with calming effects, and blue is good for creative thinking. Some studies have shown that wearing blue clothes can affect the creative emotions of people who look at them, so in theory, wearing blue clothes may have a positive effect on the creativity of your colleagues. However, the negative aspect of blue is it also has a cultural meaning of sadness and depression, associated with coldness and lack of emotion. Black, grey, dark brown, which are the dark-tone colours were associated with authority. Wearing black business attire makes people look confidant and successful, also dark clothes affect viewing from surrounding and provide a competent impression. On the contrary, lighter tones, for example, pink, yellow, white, provide a perception as being gentle, friendly and approachable. Therefore, colour plays a significant role in dressing which affect other’s opinions and behaviour.

There is an experiment about colour attractiveness from Roberts, Owen & Havlicek that taking photographs of participants under standard light conditions and the same white background while wearing t-shirts of six different colours. Asked participants to rate how attractive the people in the photos were. The result was shown that two most attractive colour were red and black. Colour of the clothes affected how others rated attractiveness. Under the same condition, different colours provide different feelings.

Through the researches and experiments, it was clearly shown that the deep relationship between psychology and clothing. Fashion not only influence other’s proception, also provide great impacts on self-behaviours. Also, the colours play a significant role in describing the feeling of clothing.

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How We Judge Others by Their Clothes

A new study on judging appearances is reviewed..

Posted May 24, 2020 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

We make numerous assumptions about strangers merely based on their physical appearances or the emotions they express . For example, we might think baby-faced people are naïve, weak, honest, submissive, or warm. And we often consider attractive people competent, intelligent, healthy, outgoing , and sexually receptive. Similarly, we usually view happy individuals as both dominant and social, judge sad and fearful ones as moderately social but low on dominance, and consider angry people as low on affiliation but high on dominance. 1

Might a person’s clothing also influence our perceptions? For instance, would you assume a woman wearing designer clothing is more competent than one wearing jeans? Would you perceive a man wearing a cooking apron as less competent than a man wearing a suit and an expensive dress shirt? Even if you were told clothes are unrelated to competence and warned not to let clothes influence your judgment of competence?

In an article published in the March 2020 issue of Nature Human Behavior , authors Oh, Shafir, and Todorov of New York University and Princeton University, present new findings on how economic status cues can affect our perceptions . 2 In a series of nine studies, community members and undergraduate students were presented with pictures of random faces paired with either expensive or cheap upper-body clothing and asked to judge these people’s competence. In all investigations, faces paired with richer clothing were judged as more competent, even when the instructions warned participants to ignore clothing in their judgments of competence.

Clothing and judgments of competence

In the first investigation, researchers varied the length of exposure to the pictures to test whether such changes would influence the perceptions of competence. In four studies (3, 6, 7, 8), the investigators also instructed the participants to avoid paying attention to the clothing of people in the picture, telling them to “Focus on the person, and ignore other features such as the clothes.”

The data showed that the duration of exposure or the use of instructions about ignoring the effects of clothing did not make any major difference in the results. Indeed, in each of the first eight studies, over 83% of faces were perceived as more competent when paired with richer (compared to poorer) clothes.

The researchers concluded that the “observed effects cannot be attributed to deliberate inferences based on the clothing,” “appear effortless since they arise at extremely short intervals,” and “are hard for respondents to control.”

In Study 9, the investigators used a choice task. Instead of judging faces one at a time, participants saw a pair of faces and were asked to choose the more competent one. Though the faces were of equal competence rating initially, one was now presented in poorer clothing and one in richer clothing. Half of the participants were also warned that clothing is unrelated to competence but may, nevertheless, influence their judgment of competence. Analysis of data showed similar results as before: About 70% said the person in richer clothing was the more competent of the pair.

Psychological trait inferences from women’s clothing: human and machine prediction

• Research Article
• Open access
• Published: 22 September 2020
• Volume 4 , pages 479–501, ( 2021 )

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• Hannes Rosenbusch   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4983-3615 1 ,
• Maya Aghaei 2 ,
• Anthony M. Evans   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3345-5282 1 &
• Marcel Zeelenberg   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7100-4223 1 , 3  

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People use clothing to make personality inferences about others, and these inferences steer social behaviors. The current work makes four contributions to the measurement and prediction of clothing-based person perception: first, we integrate published research and open-ended responses to identify common psychological inferences made from clothes (Study 1). We find that people use clothes to make inferences about happiness, sexual interest, intelligence, trustworthiness, and confidence. Second, we examine consensus (i.e., interrater agreement) for clothing-based inferences (Study 2). We observe that characteristics of the inferring observer contribute more to the drawn inferences than the observed clothes, which entails low to medium levels of interrater agreement. Third, the current work examines whether a computer vision model can use image properties (i.e., pixels alone) to replicate human inferences (Study 3). While our best model outperforms a single human rater, its absolute performance falls short of reliability conventions in psychological research. Finally, we introduce a large database of clothing images with psychological labels and demonstrate its use for exploration and replication of psychological research. The database consists of 5000 images of (western) women’s clothing items with psychological inferences annotated by 25 participants per clothing item.

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Introduction

People use an array of social information sources, such as physical appearance, language, and belongings, to form first impressions of others [ 30 , 40 , 88 ]. In response, people select and display symbols to influence which inferences are made about them [ 59 , 60 ]. Clothing is one of the most common symbols used for this purpose [ 19 , 39 ]. People use clothing to communicate their group memberships, jobs, and interests [ 4 , 12 , 28 ], as well as their emotional states [ 54 ], personality traits [ 6 , 85 ]), and capabilities [ 3 , 51 ]. Thus, clothing is seen as a primary tool of impression management by researchers and laypeople alike [ 34 , 46 ], and psychological inferences based on clothing influence impression formation [ 58 ].

In the current work, we use computational social science methods to add to the understanding of how people make inferences based on women’s clothing items. First, we review the social scientific research on clothing-based impression formation. Then we investigate which psychological attributes people believe they can infer from women’s clothes (Study 1). Subsequently, we examine interpersonal consensus in clothing inferences (i.e., we assess interrater agreement), and determine how many human raters are needed for stable average inferences (Study 2). Lastly, we use the insights from our first two studies to build a labeled database of clothes for social scientific research, and to test whether a machine learning model can replicate (i.e., predict) human inferences from clothing (Study 3). We conclude by demonstrating the use of the database, and discussing the insights from all three studies. Importantly, note that these studies focus on how people make inferences from clothing, and are agnostic about whether these inferences are accurate (or inaccurate).

Psychological inferences from clothing

The role of clothing in impression formation is a popular topic in public discourse. Popular media devotes considerable attention to how clothing can help consumers make good impressions and ‘dress for success’ (e.g., [ 21 ]. People use clothes to attempt to convey a positive image of themselves, assuming that the way they dress affects the inferences that others will make about them [ 8 ]. In scholarly work, this theme has also received interdisciplinary attention, with much of this work rooted in evolutionary approaches to social signaling (e.g., [ 86 ]). For example, various non-human animals benefit in reproductive competition through displaying ornaments or costly behaviors [ 18 , 72 ]. Humans also engage in similar forms of status signaling in their display of clothing. Nelissen and Meijers [ 59 ], for instance, observed that perceivers judge targets wearing luxury clothing brands as higher status, and also express favorable behaviors towards them across a range of social situations.

A complementary account of clothing selection, again rooted in evolutionary processes, identifies clothes as a culturally acquired indicator of group memberships. Group-specific clothing serves to strengthen group cohesion [ 20 ] and signals social resources and embeddedness to observers [ 70 ]. Clothes help to express such social identities (cf. [ 23 ]) and they are often explicitly brought in line with people’s personal identity, including self-ascribed personality, capabilities, and aesthetic preferences [ 12 , 66 ].

In personality psychology, personality judgment from observable indicators, or cues (e.g., language, [ 69 ]) is often analyzed using Brunswik’s classic lens model [ 11 ]. The lens framework highlights that actual personality traits, as well as people’s judgments of personality traits, are based on the target person’s cue behaviors (e.g., wearing specific shoes, Gillath et al. 2012 ). However, the degree of association between the observable cue and the actual personality measurement (i.e., the cue validity) might differ from the association between cue and personality judgment (i.e., the cue utilization).

Clothing choices are often utilized as cues in person perception [ 46 ]. Similar to, for instance, music selection, wearing specific clothes may serve as a means to fulfill personal psychological needs, thereby allowing for valid associations between clothes and personality [ 68 ]. On the other hand, humans are widely known to see and rely on patterns to an unrealistic degree [ 13 , 82 ] and are especially prone to this tendency in the context of person perception [ 73 ]. Accordingly, psychological work has shown repeatedly that inferences made from clothing can be unreliable (i.e., low cue validity) or even fully inaccurate [ 26 , 55 ]. Clothes may be more likely to reflect the personality traits that targets hope to project, rather than the traits targets actually possess. This relatively poor accuracy is in line with research on psychological inferences from other indicators, such as facial and vocal features, where accuracy is, at best, extremely limited [ 57 , 61 , 62 , 77 , 81 ].

Despite their lack of validity, psychological inferences from clothes are very relevant in everyday life, as they steer people’s perception and subsequent behavior towards each other [ 40 ]. For example, red clothes are associated with perceived dominance (e.g., [ 86 ]) and skin revealing clothes are perceived as indicators of sexual interest [ 26 ]. However, past studies on the social psychology of clothing often relied on small, study-specific clothing samples to test general theories (e.g., three outfit options for teachers [ 22 ]; Taekwondo equipment [ 29 ]). In the current work, we address this limitation using a large database (5000 images labeled by 25 human raters each) to answer question about clothing-based inferences.

Uniting computational and social psychological approaches

Computational research on clothing to date has focused on accurate machine classification of clothing images [ 49 ], extraction of clothes from images [ 41 ], and building recommendation systems for customers [ 35 ]. While social subtleties of clothes are not considered very often yet, computational research does possess two advantages over psychological work in the field: typically large datasets and powerful analysis tools. In the current work, we utilize both these resources to answer our research questions about the nature of clothing-based inferences, the origins of their variance, and their predictability.

Uniting computational and psychological research in the field of clothing and impression formation was first proposed by Aghaei et al. [ 5 ]. In their position paper, they argued that clothing-focused research in computer science and machine learning has the methods to venture beyond superficial categorizations (e.g., into colors or cuts [ 49 , 87 ]) towards processing the social signals within clothes. First steps into this direction were taken by Ma et al. [ 50 ], who demonstrated automatic extraction of semantic styles from clothing images (e.g., ‘classic’ vs. ‘modern’). Wei et al. [ 85 ] extended this line of work by extracting significant correlations between the ascribed personality traits of 300 celebrities (e.g., ‘friendly’) and their clothing styles (e.g., ‘light-colored’) from online images. Note that, like in the current work, the authors did not attempt to predict people’s actual personality traits from clothes, but rather investigated ascribed (here: inferred) characteristics. Personality inferences may be easier to predict from clothing than actual personality traits. The nature of inferences already implies that the clothes are (supposed to be) the source of the measurement variance, whereas there is no such connection between clothes and actual personality. Despite the conceptual difference between inferred and actual traits, both are extremely important in everyday interactions, as inferences steer people’s behavior towards each other [ 40 ]. Similarly, research on human faces began by testing potential connections between facial features and actual psychological characteristics, before realizing the lack of reliable relationships and transitioning to focus on inferred characteristics and the downstream consequences of such inferences [ 62 , 81 ]. In the current work, we aim to use computational methods to advance research on clothing-based inferences in the same direction.

Overview of studies

As mentioned, there are four overarching goals of the present research. First, we investigate which psychological inferences are most commonly being made based on clothes (Study 1). Then we determine how much variance there is in clothing-based inferences and to which degree this variance emerges from differences in clothes versus differences in raters (Study 2). Subsequently, we utilize the insights from Study 1 and Study 2 to build a database for clothing-based research on psychological inferences. Lastly, we test whether a statistical model can be trained to replicate human-like inferences from images (Study 3).

In the current work, we focus on women’s clothes to minimize the vast diversity of existing clothes and psychological associations. This decision makes our studies much more economical, while maintaining a clearly defined target population for the database and prediction model. We concentrate on women’s clothes as they receive more attention by both researchers and laypeople [ 2 , 6 , 27 , 65 , 75 ].

Study 1: identifying common psychological inferences

The role of clothes in impression formation is an active research field across several disciplines in psychology. But what are the most prevalent traits that people infer from clothing items? In this first study, we aim to identify the traits that are commonly inferred according to both researchers and laypeople. Past literature reviews provide an overview of psychological attributes examined in clothing-focused research [ 19 , 39 , 46 ]. We used these reviews (and the reviewed publications) to generate a set of trait inferences made about the wearers and owners of specific clothes. This first set of traits consisted of inferences commonly examined by researchers . Additionally, we collected data on the trait inferences commonly made by participants/non-researchers . Together, these two sets informed us about which psychological inferences are considered important in research as well as in people’s daily life. In the following section, we describe how we acquired, condensed, and ultimately combined these two sets.

It is worth noting that we did not aim to build a comprehensive theoretical framework specifying all latent psychological dimensions of clothes. Such work would likely employ a factor analytic approach and condense a large set of numerical inferences into a smaller set of overarching theoretical dimensions (cf., [ 19 ]). Instead, our goal was to obtain a set of the most prevalent psychological inferences from (women’s) clothes according to social science researchers and laypeople. Note that these most common inferences might not coincide exactly with the sets of characteristics mentioned in general models of psychological traits (e.g., Big Five [ 90 ]) or states (e.g., basic emotions [ 64 ]). This is because specific contexts lead to different levels of prevalence for different psychological inferences (cf., dimensions in Big Five versus dimensions of face-based inferences [ 79 ]. Therefore, we conducted a dedicated entry study to identify the most prevalent inferences from clothing.

Given the large number of strategies to determine a most relevant subset, we used methods from Aaker [ 1 ], who developed a taxonomy for personality inferences about corporate brands, as a guideline. We modified this procedure to allow an integration of open-ended responses from participants and previous publications on clothing-based inferences. The overall procedure to identify the most prevalent inferences consisted of three steps: first, two sets of words describing psychological inferences from clothes were collected. These words (e.g., ‘smart’, ‘happy’) were provided by participants through online surveys and by researchers through past publications in the field. Second, the two lists of words were aggregated into two lists of topics (e.g., ‘happy’ and ‘joyful’ might be assigned to a ‘positive mood’ topic). Third, the topics that were commonly mentioned in, both online surveys and past publications were identified as the most relevant subset. This procedure allowed us to utilize basic textual data to answer our entry question: Which psychological inferences are commonly being made from clothes according to both researchers and laypeople?

Commonly investigated inferences in academic research

We identified 53 empirical research papers and 3 literature reviews that described psychological inferences that people make based on clothing. We concentrated our search on papers cited in or citing the 3 review papers and conducted an unstructured check for major oversights through Google Scholar. From these papers, we extracted 756 traits (394 unique words). While this is likely not a complete sample of research papers or trait inferences, it allowed us to find the most common clothing-based inferences. The top row in Table 1 shows the words that were mentioned most frequently in the scientific publications.

Common inferences among laypeople

We generated an additional set of common inferences (according to laypeople) by asking 201 participants on Prolific Academic (125 female, 74 male, 2 other; M age  = 33.5, SD = 10.8), which psychological attributes can be predicted from clothes. Each participant was asked to provide up to 10 open answers, resulting in a total of 1620 answers (460 unique answers). The bottom row in Table 1 shows the most common inferences mentioned by participants.

Identifying the most relevant subset

Our goal was to identify a subset of traits based on two criteria: first, the included traits should be mentioned by both researchers and participants. Second, the included traits should appear relatively often in both lists. The simplest approach to satisfy these criteria would be to sort the terms according to their frequency (as in Table 1 ) and look for terms with relatively high counts in both sets. However, this approach would not account for the presence of synonyms, meaning that important constructs might be overlooked (e.g., because some constructs may be described frequently using a multitude of different terms, resulting in relatively low counts). Similarly, academic language may differ from participants’ language, potentially leading to difficulties in matching latent overlap between the two groups of traits.

Given these challenges, we introduced two intermediate text processing steps to examine, spot, and compare mentioned concepts (benefits of such methods for research synthesis are described by Ref. [ 16 ]). First, we used a pretrained word2vec model (semantic space generated by Ref. [ 53 ]) to convert each mentioned word into a sequence of numerical coordinates. This numerical representation (often called embeddedness) of each word was constructed in the original training process of the word2vec model. More precisely, each word received scores on 300 variables computed from the word’s relative co-occurrence with other words (see word2vec script in supplementary materials). After this transformation of words to numerical coordinates, we used k-means clustering, to define word clusters or ‘topics’ (in the 300-dimensional space) and simultaneously assign cluster memberships to each word. We estimated 100 clusters (as a compromise between cluster uniqueness and differentiability), as we expected that the most important topics would be identifiable at this degree of complexity. Note that these steps were merely introduced to support our human selection of traits and the manual matching between research and participant content. While it would be possible to fully automate the process, we preferred human decision-making for the final matching between both lists.

Condensing the two word-frequency lists to two topic-frequency lists allowed us to better spot the targeted overlap between the researcher terms and laypeople terms. For each identified topic, we computed a simple count describing how often this topic was mentioned (through one of its indicator words) by researchers and participants, respectively. Then we examined the 20 most commonly mentioned topics in each of the two lists and manually searched for overlap. Table 2 shows the five overarching inferences which were mentioned relatively often by both researchers and participants. The final selection of common psychological inferences consisted of five traits: happiness, sexual interest, intelligence, trustworthiness, and confidence. This set of inferences strongly resembles inferences that people draw from faces [ 63 ], which fall into the overarching dimensions trustworthiness (also including attributes like happiness) and dominance (broadly related to attributes of strength and potency). Inferences of sexual interest seem to be more specific to clothing. More general models of person perception, for instance, the prominent distinction of warmth (here trustworthiness and happiness) and competence (here confidence and intelligence) in social cognition research [ 24 ] are also strongly reflected in the list of clothing-based inferences.

Study 2: sources of variance in trait inferences from clothing

As described in our review of previous literature, psychological inferences from clothes often turn out to be inaccurate. The question remains to which degree people agree in their inferences, meaning whether independent raters would form the same inferences from the same piece of clothing (regardless of their accuracy). Alternatively, the source of variance in inferences might lie within the specific rater (as opposed to the clothes) leading to reliable patterns for an individual rater, but inconsistent ratings for a single piece of clothing when collected by different raters. To answer the question whether inferences lie ‘in the eye of the beholder’ versus in the characteristics of the observed clothes, Study 2 quantifies the contribution of both sources of variance. Our approach is similar to research that quantifies the interrater reliability for face-based inferences, which vary considerably across individual raters (e.g., [ 32 ]).

Additionally, quantifications of interrater agreement allow us to estimate how many raters are needed to generate stable average inferences for clothes. Intuitively, low interrater agreement entails the need to collect many inferences per piece of clothing, whereas high agreement allows for a lower number of raters for a stable average. Knowledge about this critical quantity is necessary for constructing a useful database of clothing-based inferences in Study 3. Similarly, it is useful to know how much noise can be expected in the averaged inference scores when training a statistical model to re-predict these scores as also planned for Study 3 [ 42 ]. That is, if the reliability of the averaged scores is low, then the achievable prediction accuracy will inevitably be low as well.

In short, Study 2 answers two interrelated questions. The first is the question of the determinants of clothing-based inferences (i.e., do they lie in the clothes or the observer?), and the second is how many raters are needed to obtain reliable measures of clothing-based inferences. We answer the first question by collecting clothing-based inferences from independent raters, specify ‘raters’ and ‘pieces of clothing’ as higher-level variables in a multi-level model, and estimating the relative variance explained by these variables (cf., methodology of [ 32 ]). In other words, we ask to what extent the ratings of clothing items are based on the differences between clothing items versus differences between individual raters.

We answer the second question by iteratively including more raters per piece of clothing and judging at which point the confidence interval around a ‘true’ average inference (estimated based on a much larger sample of raters) becomes sufficiently small. This iteratively shrinking confidence interval has been labeled the corridor-of-confidence [ 33 ]. Naturally, a threshold for sufficiently narrow confidence intervals is somewhat subjective; therefore, we add a more intuitive, supporting metric: the correlation coefficient between average inferences and the ‘true’ average inferences. A higher correlation indicates that the average inferences of the subsample are closer in line with the true average inferences. Iteratively increasing the number of raters also increases this correlation coefficient to a point where social scientists would evaluate it as a reliable measurement (here we chose r  = 0.8). Further details are given in “ Results” section.

Rater sample

To quantify interrater reliability and a corridor of confidence for clothing-based inferences, we collected data from a labeling task with a sample of clothing items and a sample of raters. We collected responses from 400 raters (250 female, 146 male, 2 other, 2 missing; M age  = 35.4, SD = 12.6) using Prolific Academic.

Clothing sample

We obtained an initial sample of 5000 images of clothing items by scraping eight large shopping websites (The Gap, Topshop, Esprit, Primark, H&M, Zara, Prada, and Gucci). We chose websites representing the largest retailers from the USA and Europe from a diverse price range. Thus, our database represents the clothes commonly worn in Western countries at the time of data collection (autumn 2019). We further obtained images from Vestiaire Collective, a second-hand website, to account for psychologically unique signals from non-new clothes. We downloaded all available article images from the shopping websites using Python scripts primarily involving the selenium package for accessing web elements [ 56 ]. The supplementary materials include an annotated Python script showing how to download the images. We manually sorted out falsely included images not showing clothes. Table 3 depicts the distribution of the six most common clothing categories across the six most common colors.

We used a white background for each image (unless the piece of clothing was white itself, in which case we used a gray background to enhance visibility). We only included upper and lower body outerwear, which are commonly visible in social interactions (i.e., we excluded underwear, socks, and swimwear). Further, we excluded shoes and accessories such as scarfs, hats, and jewelry to minimize complexity in the dataset and the resulting strain on the prediction models. Out of the 5000 available photos, we used 200 randomly selected images in Study 2. We aimed to collect 80 ratings per image on all five traits as 80 ratings clearly go beyond the common amounts of raters per stimuli in psychological research [ 17 , 45 , 52 ]. While there was some random dropout, we obtained a relatively stable number of ratings per image (minimum = 79, median = 82, maximum = 86).

Each participant was presented with a subset of 40 randomly selected images. For each image, participants were asked to indicate their inference of each of the five selected attributes on a 10-point scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 10 (very much). Afterwards, participants were asked about their belief in clothing-based inferences and face-based inferences respectively (7-point scales with three items from [ 36 ]). An example item is “I can learn something about a person’s personality just from looking at his or her face (/clothes)”. The rating task was written in Python and administered using oTree [ 15 ].

Generally, people believed slightly more in the validity of clothing-based inferences than in the validity of inferences from neutral faces ( d  = 0.34, Welch’s t (401) = 6.038, p  < 0.001). Also, the belief in clothing-based inference correlated positively with belief in face-based inference ( r  = 0.35, p  < 0.001).

Regarding the clothing ratings, there were bell-shaped distributions of participant inferences as depicted in Fig.  1 . There were no strong floor or ceiling effects, but sometimes a slight dominance of the neutral scale midpoint (e.g., for perceptions of sexual interest), likely indicating that there were many low-signal clothing items.

Distribution of participants’ psychological inferences from clothes

Regarding the level of interrater agreement, our results suggest that the level of agreement is comparable to the results of studies on agreement in face-based inferences [ 32 ]. In multilevel models predicting the clothing-based inferences, the variance explained by the respective piece of clothing ranged from 5.8% (trustworthiness) to 16.9% (sexual interest). The variance explained by individual rater tendencies was slightly higher, again mirroring research in face-based research (see Fig.  2 ). For example, Hehman et al. [ 32 ] estimated that face stimuli explain only about 5–10% of rating variance in perceived intelligence, whereas interrater differences accounted for 3–4 times more variance. Our results suggest that when people infer psychological attributes from clothes, interrater differences are more important than the actual characteristics of the clothes.

Variance in ratings accounted for by clothes and raters, respectively. The bars depict the variance explained within individual ratings (ICC2, 1). Variance explained by “other” factors includes error variance and the interaction between clothing and rater (not computable with our study design). The reliability of average ratings (estimating how much of the true variance between clothes can be captured by average ratings) is naturally higher with G ( q , k ) lying between 0.86 (happiness) and 0.94 (sexual interest; for more information on G as a measure of explained variance and alternative to ICC in rating tasks, see [ 67 ])

To probe how many raters are needed to generate reliable mean inferences, we examined each trait’s corridor of confidence. That is, we took a subsample of raters and plotted the deviation of their mean inference against the full-sample mean inference (i.e., based on all 80 raters) across a range of sample sizes (with larger subsamples of raters naturally leading to smaller deviations). These deviations can be regarded as residuals indicating how far off the subsample of raters was from the actual average score. As such residual sizes are not normalized and might thus be difficult to interpret, we also provide an alternative form of the corridor of confidence by plotting the correlation between sub-sample inferences and full-sample inferences across the same range of sub-sample sizes. The corridors of confidence for the most reliable trait (sexual interest) and least reliable trait (trustworthiness) are depicted in Fig.  3 .

Corridors of confidence for residuals and bootstrap sample—full-sample correlation for bootstrapped rater samples of different sizes. Each plot is based on 60,000 bootstrap samples

As shown in all panels of Fig.  3 , higher numbers of raters allowed for a better approximation of the average inferences obtained by the full sample of raters. With 25 raters (see the dotted lines), the mean’s deviation from the full-sample mean was usually less than 0.4 scale points on the 10-point scales (in our study, standard deviations were between 0.502 and 0.956). More intuitively, the average inference of 25 raters always correlated with over 0.8 with the inferences of the full rater sample. As mentioned above, most social scientist would consider this a reasonably reliable approximation. Therefore, in Study 3, we decided to recruit 25 raters per image.

Study 3: building a database and testing the predictability of clothing-based inferences

In our final study, we collected data for a fully labeled clothing image database. Additionally, we aimed to test whether it is possible to train a statistical model to replicate psychological inferences from images. We employed a convolutional neural network (for an introduction to these models, see [ 7 ]), a predominant approach in image-based machine learning that commonly outperforms other image-based prediction models, conditional on large sample sizes [ 14 , 47 , 48 ]. Accordingly, research on clothing recognition, classification, and synthesis has predominantly relied on Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DNNs; [ 49 , 84 , 89 ]). Consequently, we also targeted this family of models to address the current problem. However, building a DNN from scratch requires a large quantity of training data, which is often out of the budget of research projects. In such a case, a common practice is to deploy a pre-trained model with pre-initialized coefficients and to fine-tune it for a new task (e.g., AlexNet [ 43 ], ResNet [ 31 ], VGG [ 74 ]). Employing this technique enables DNNs to adequately learn new tasks with less training data. Thus, we used a pretrained network (built for a general object recognition task) and fine-tuned it for the task at hand [ 80 ].

Below, we describe the full sample of clothes and raters used to generate the final dataset, as well as results from the model validation. The procedure for the collection of images and ratings was identical to Study 2.

Final image collection

As described in Study 2, we obtained 5000 images of women’s clothing items from online shops. To generate the fully labeled database, we recruited human raters to label the 4800 images that were not used in Study 2. The full database including the five commonly inferred traits from Study 1 can be accessed here: https://bit.ly/2V7X4p6 .

We acquired ratings again from participants on Prolific Academic. Based on the results of Study 2, we aimed to obtain 25 ratings per image, with each rater evaluating a total of 40 images each. To label all 4800 images (200 were labeled for Study 2), we, therefore, aimed to collect responses from 4800 × 25/40 = 3000 participants. There are some minor deviations in the numbers of raters per image, as participants occasionally dropped out (primarily during a short server outage) and were automatically replaced by Prolific (minimum = 20 raters, 25th percentile = 24, median = 26, 75th percentile = 27, maximum = 28). The rater sample consisted of 3283 participants (1734 female, 1214 male, 20 other, 11 prefer not to say, 304 missing; M age  = 36.14, SD = 12.47).

Belief in inference from clothing

Again, people believed slightly more in the validity of clothing-based inferences than in the validity of face-based inferences ( d  = 0.299, Welch’s t (2986) = 15.189, p  < 0.001). Also, measure of belief in face-based and clothing-based inferences again correlated positively ( r  = 0.421, p  < 0.001).

Exemplary insights from database

With the large number of clothes, it is possible to analyze correlational relationships between different clothing features (such as color) and personality inferences (see Fig.  4 ). For instance, we replicated the effect of clothing brightness on inferred happiness [ 9 ]. Gray clothes were seen as stronger indicators of happiness than black clothes, t (1580.7) = 6.416, p  < 0.001, and white clothes were seen as happier than gray clothes, t (995.5) = − 2.239, p  = 0.025) Of course, it is also possible to make new discoveries in the database. An example is that silver clothing was associated with more extreme scores on all five personality dimensions (all | t| s (≈34.5) > 4.736, all p s < 0.001).

Trait inferences for all traits across six color categories

Similarly, it is possible to analyze relationships between trait inferences and different clothing cuts (see Fig.  5 ). For instance, we replicated the positive effect of exposed skin (here: length of skirt) on perceived sexual interest ( t (275.83) = − 10.509, p  < 0.001; [ 38 ]). We also observed new insights: for example, track pants were negatively associated with perceptions of intelligence and trustworthiness [ t (117.74) = 10.197, p  < 0.001; t (118.11) = 8.934, p  < 0.001].

Trait inferences for all traits across six clothing categories

Model building and test accuracy

Lastly, we tested whether a statistical model can be trained to replicate human-like inferences from images of clothing. To build the prediction model, we used the keras module in Python to finetune ResNet50 (a popular object recognition network; [ 31 ]) for the current task. This convolutional neural network makes predictions based on raw pixel inputs, meaning no handcrafted features such as clothing categories or styles are used for prediction, though they may in fact be correlated with the specific features that are used in prediction. The capability of neural networks to generate their own predictive features by feeding raw data through consecutive transformation layers constitutes their main advantage over classical machine learning. The associated disadvantage is that deep networks are, similar to human vision, highly complex and their inner workings remain difficult to explain [ 71 ]. For each of the five traits, we report the out of sample prediction accuracy obtained during tenfold cross-validation. Prediction accuracies are listed in Table 4 . The full training and tuning python script, as well as the final model can be obtained here: https://bit.ly/2V7X4p6 .

The prediction model was able to replicate the inferences about as well as two human raters combined. While this is a good relative performance of the model (cf. medical diagnoses by a statistical model being as good as consulting two independent doctors), the absolute, practical performance of the model is medium for some traits and low for others. Note that the model performs worse for traits where the initial rater reliability is also low, suggesting that prediction is generally more difficult for these traits.

To give a better sense about the scale of our accuracy scores, one can refer to guidelines for evaluating test–retest reliabilities in psychological science, as test–retest reliabilities and our accuracy scores use the same scale. For sexual interest predictions (the trait with the highest level of model accuracy), the accuracy of the model is r  = 0.503 (correlation between measured and predicted values). This is equally high as the often criticized test–retest reliability of Implicit Association Tests (correlation of measured and repeated values; [ 44 ], and clearly below conventional guidelines for good reliability, which lie at r  = 0.7 or higher. Thus, future attempts at training models to reliably replicate average human inferences still have a way to go, despite initial models already performing better than a human rater.

General discussion

What psychological inferences do we make when looking at clothes? In the current work, we investigate which inferences are most commonly drawn from women’s clothing items; how strongly people overlap in their inferences; and whether statistical models can be trained to replicate human inferences from clothing. In Study 1, we found that people commonly use clothing items to make inferences about five overarching traits: happiness, intelligence, confidence, trustworthiness, and sexual interest. The first four of these attributes replicate work from face-based inferences as well as overarching dimensions in person perception [ 24 , 63 ]. In contrast, the inference of sexual motivation seems to be more specific to clothing. In Study 2, we examined the consistency of trait ratings from clothing items across raters. The psychological inferences made from clothing are strongly affected by the characteristics of the observer, meaning that differences between the raters contribute more to inferences than differences between the actual clothing items. That is, much like inferences from faces, the inferred attributes often lie in the eye of the beholder. Nonetheless, there is sufficient agreement among raters to generate stable average inference scores with a minimum of 25 raters per piece of clothing. For inferences that vary more among people (e.g., the inferences of happiness and trustworthiness) the reliability of 25 averaged ratings is somewhat low.

In Study 3, we generated a database of 5000 images with inferred psychological attributes. We demonstrated that the materials from the database can be used to replicate and extend social scientific research on the psychology of clothing. Further, we tested whether deep convolutional neural networks (DNN) could be trained to re-predict human inferences for new clothing items. The achieved accuracies surpass the prediction of some other latent psychological phenomena (e.g., personality from language [ 76 ], romantic attraction from questionnaires [ 37 ], sexual orientation from faces [ 83 ]). One reason could be that the current prediction target (‘inference from picture X’) is more closely related to the used predictors (‘picture X’) compared to other prediction contexts (e.g., using facial features to predict sexual orientation). Another theoretical advantage is that the current work predicts inferences of psychological characteristics, whereas other work targets the challenging goal of predicting actual (i.e., self-reported) attributes, which differ from inferred attributes, both in conceptual terms and in their behavioral consequences.

On the other hand, the absolute accuracy of our prediction model falls behind non-psychological work in object recognition (e.g., [ 49 ]). The reason is likely that the task of such models (e.g., ‘predict whether this picture shows a human’) is less difficult than the goals here and in most psychological work, which are tied to more latent attributes of pictures. Models predicting variables measured with high reliability (e.g., clothing color) can achieve much higher accuracies than models where accuracy results are limited by noise in the target variable (e.g., personality scores [ 42 ]). In this regard, it is noteworthy that the current model delivers predictions that are usually better than labels provided by a human rater, that is, they are more consistent with the average inferences of a crowd of raters.

Interestingly, the reliability of human trait ratings and model accuracies varied across traits: Reliability and model performance were best for sexual interest and confidence, and worst for trustworthiness and happiness (with intelligence falling somewhere in between). Here, worse model performance is likely attributable to the lower levels of reliability in human perceptions of trustworthiness and happiness. But why is there less consistency in human ratings of these two traits in particular? Ratings of trustworthiness and happiness are likely seen as indicators of warmth, a fundamental dimension in person perception [ 24 ]. Warmth refers to an individual’s intentions towards others, and it is seen as closely related to morality. Perhaps people believe that these traits are harder to observe from superficial characteristics, such as clothing items. This example highlights that it is important for researchers to understand how people think about and perceive different traits, when trying to build models re-predicting people’s inferences.

Use and limitations of the database and model

The image database can be accessed and downloaded here: https://bit.ly/2V7X4p6 . We hope that researchers in the social sciences use this resource to replicate analyses in published work and test new ideas about the effect of specific features (such as colors, cuts, and clothing type) and other predictors (e.g., ‘skin exposure’, ‘brand labels’) on trait inferences. It would also be interesting to examine the potential of such handcrafted features to improve the here presented prediction accuracies, which were achieved based on raw pixel values alone. Next to such analyses, researchers can relabel (part of) the data and test for changes over time, over rater samples, or the effect of certain conditions (e.g., effects of colorblindness, regional differences, fashion trends). Other interesting areas of research pertain to the interrelations of traits inferred from clothes in the tradition of the implicit personality theory [ 10 ]. In other words, it may be interesting to investigate whether the inference of one trait (e.g., intelligence) commonly entails the inference of a different trait (e.g., trustworthiness [ 78 ]).

Lastly, the database can be used as a missing puzzle piece within research on impression formation, primarily research on faces, bodies, and clothes. Disentangling the effect of these factors on first impressions through large studies with crossed stimuli (from existing databases) is in our opinion an important extension of the current research. While the database provides a large set of stimuli, we want to highlight that improved machine learning models could be even more useful given their ability to accurately label new images of clothes, thereby extending the research possibilities listed above. While the accuracies achieved here are promising, we want to highlight that the study is not sufficiently comprehensive for individual diagnosis. However, the models are still capable to enable research on larger sets of clothes in which the accuracy of individual predictions is less crucial. Further, researchers can use the provided models to save resources in labeling new clothes by replacing some raters with a prediction made by the model. Next to psychological work, we hope that the provided materials are adopted in work focused on machine learning techniques (e.g., fashion recommendation systems).

We found that the most prevalent psychological inferences from clothes lie on the dimensions of happiness, sexual interest, intelligence, trustworthiness, and confidence. When making psychological attributions to clothes, the observing rater has a stronger influence on the result than the actual clothes in question. Further, we generated a database of 5000 clothing images. Psychological inferences were provided by 25 raters per image. The materials enable a wide range of psychological, clothing-focused research. Lastly, we show that machine learning models can achieve better-than-human performance in replicating inferences from clothing images. The present research opens potential avenues for future interdisciplinary research in the areas of computer vision and social psychology.

Materials and software

Data and materials can be downloaded here: https://bit.ly/2V7X4p6 . We used R scripts (version 3.6.1) for the data analysis and Python scripts (version 3.7.3) for building the prediction model. Both can be found in the materials linked above.

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Rosenbusch, H., Aghaei, M., Evans, A.M. et al. Psychological trait inferences from women’s clothing: human and machine prediction. J Comput Soc Sc 4 , 479–501 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-020-00085-6

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How Clothing Choices Affect and Reflect Your Self-Image

Author, Artist, Founder of Women's Wellness Weekends

Your style and the clothes you choose reflect and affect your mood, health, and overall confidence. Scientists call this phenomenon "enclothed cognition", and Adam Hajo and Adam D. Galinsky, both professors at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, write in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , write that enclothed cognition "involves the co-occurrence of two independent factors -- the symbolic meaning of the clothes and the physical experience of wearing them." The researchers had subjects perform tests while wearing a lab coat like medical doctors wear, a coat like painters wear, and while not wearing either coat. They found that subjects' sustained attention increased while wearing the doctors' coats in a way that their attention did not increase while wearing the painters' coats or no coats.

Similarly, Professor Karen J. Pine, of the University of Hertfordshire (U.K.) writes in her very short book Mind What You Wear: The Psychology of Fashion "When we put on a piece of clothing we cannot help but adopt some of the characteristics associated with it, even if we are unaware of it." In the studies Pine conducted, as related in her book, one participant admitted, "If I'm in casual clothes I relax and am tomboyish, but if I dress up for a meeting or a special occasion, it can alter the way I walk and hold myself."

That is what Lisa Stariha, The Body Empowerment Coach , tries to instill her in clients. She says it is so important to "Get up, get dressed, and never give up each day." Stariha, who often works from her home office, knows how comfortable it can be to work in yoga pants and a cozy shirt. But, she says, "to feel more beautiful, confident, and strong, you must change out of the yoga pants and put on clothes that give you power," just as Wonder Woman went from her Diana Prince uniform to her kick-butt Wonder Woman costume.

How important and empowering the right clothes, and even the right under garments, can be is one of the things my co-authors, Jean Otte and Rosina L. Racioppi and I mentioned in our book WOMEN Are Changing the Corporate Landscape: Rules for Cultivating Leadership Excellence. And Business Insider says that clothes don't just affect your confidence levels, they can affect your success, as "clothing significantly influences how others perceive you and how they respond to you."

In 2014, car manufacturer Kia took a survey of what makes people feel confident, a few of the things included in the top 10 list for women included: high heels, a little black dress, and designer perfume. For men, the list included: a freshly shaved face, a new suit, and a nice smelling aftershave.

Understanding the psychological dynamics of why the right-for-us clothing can contribute to our confidence, raise our self esteem, and help propel us in the workplace has become big business. Image, style, and branding consultants are hired by everyone from celebrities to the average Joe, with, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics more than 56,000 people claiming that as their occupation in 2014. Kim Peterson, of Uniquely Savvy, helps people champion themselves through personal brand and style analysis, body and color analysis, wardrobe analysis, personal shopping, and virtual style consulting for individuals, and more progressive businesses bring Kim in to do workshops for their employees on these self-empowerment topics.

So the next time you reach for those yoga pants or for that fiery red dress, ask yourself how will that clothing item make you feel and what is it saying to the world around you today?

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April 2, 2024

Eclipse Psychology: When the Sun and Moon Align, So Do We

How a total solar eclipse creates connection, unity and caring among the people watching

By Katie Weeman

Students observing a partial solar eclipse on June 21, 2020, in Lhokseumawe, Aceh Province, Indonesia.

NurPhoto/Getty Images

This article is part of a special report on the total solar eclipse that will be visible from parts of the U.S., Mexico and Canada on April 8, 2024.

It was 11:45 A.M. on August 21, 2017. I was in a grassy field in Glendo, Wyo., where I was surrounded by strangers turned friends, more than I could count—and far more people than had ever flocked to this town, population 210 or so. Golden sunlight blanketed thousands of cars parked in haphazard rows all over the rolling hills. The shadows were quickly growing longer, the air was still, and all of our faces pointed to the sky. As the moon progressively covered the sun, the light melted away, the sky blackened, and the temperature dropped. At the moment of totality, when the moon completely covered the sun , some people around me suddenly gasped. Some cheered; some cried; others laughed in disbelief.

Exactly 53 minutes later, in a downtown park in Greenville, S.C., the person who edited this story and the many individuals around him reacted in exactly the same ways.

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When a total solar eclipse descends—as one will across Mexico, the U.S. and Canada on April 8—everyone and everything in the path of totality are engulfed by deep shadow. Unlike the New Year’s Eve countdown that lurches across the globe one blocky time zone after another, the shadow of totality is a dark spot on Earth that measures about 100 miles wide and cruises steadily along a path, covering several thousand miles in four to five hours. The human experiences along that path are not isolated events any more than individual dominoes are isolated pillars in a formation. Once that first domino is tipped, we are all linked into something bigger—and unstoppable. We all experience the momentum and the awe together.

When this phenomenon progresses from Mexico through Texas, the Great Lakes and Canada on April 8, many observers will describe the event as life-changing, well beyond expectations. “You feel a sense of wrongness in those moments before totality , when your surroundings change so rapidly,” says Kate Russo, an author, psychologist and eclipse chaser. “Our initial response is to ask ourselves, ‘Is this an opportunity or a threat?’ When the light changes and the temperature drops, that triggers primal fear. When we have that threat response, our whole body is tuned in to taking in as much information as possible.”

Russo, who has witnessed 13 total eclipses and counting, has interviewed eclipse viewers from around the world. She continues to notice the same emotions felt by all. They begin with that sense of wrongness and primal fear as totality approaches. When totality starts, we feel powerful awe and connection to the world around us. A sense of euphoria develops as we continue watching, and when it’s over, we have a strong desire to seek out the next eclipse.

“The awe we feel during a total eclipse makes us think outside our sense of self. It makes you more attuned to things outside of you,” says Sean Goldy, a postdoctoral fellow at the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

Goldy and his team analyzed Twitter data from nearly 2.9 million people during the 2017 total solar eclipse. They found that people within the path of totality were more likely to use not only language that expressed awe but also language that conveyed being unified and affiliated with others. That meant using more “we” words (“us” instead of “me”) and more humble words (“maybe” instead of “always”).

“During an eclipse, people have a broader, more collective focus,” Goldy says. “We also found that the more people expressed awe, the more likely they were to use those ‘we’ words, indicating that people who experience this emotion feel more connected with others.”

This connectivity ties into a sociological concept known as “collective effervescence,” Russo and Goldy say. When groups of humans come together over a shared experience, the energy is greater than the sum of its parts. If you’ve ever been to a large concert or sporting event, you’ve felt the electricity generated by a hive of humans. It magnifies our emotions.

I felt exactly that unified feeling in the open field in Glendo, as if thousands of us were breathing as one. But that’s not the only way people can experience a total eclipse.

During the 2008 total eclipse in Mongolia “I was up on a peak,” Russo recounts. “I was with only my husband and a close friend. We had left the rest of our 25-person tour group at the bottom of the hill. From that vantage point, when the shadow came sweeping in, there was not one man-made thing I could see: no power lines, no buildings or structures. Nothing tethered me to time: It could have been thousands of years ago or long into the future. In that moment, it was as if time didn’t exist.”

Giving us the ability to unhitch ourselves from time—to stop dwelling on time is a unique superpower of a total eclipse. In Russo’s work as a clinical psychologist, she notices patterns in our modern-day mentality. “People with anxiety tend to spend a lot of time in the future. And people with depression spend a lot of time in the past,” she says. An eclipse, time and time again, has the ability to snap us back into the present, at least for a few minutes. “And when you’re less anxious and worried, it opens you up to be more attuned to other people, feel more connected, care for others and be more compassionate,” Goldy says.

Russo, who founded Being in the Shadow , an organization that provides information about total solar eclipses and organizes eclipse events around the world, has experienced this firsthand. Venue managers regularly tell her that eclipse crowds are among the most polite and humble: they follow the rules; they pick up their garbage—they care.

Eclipses remind us that we are part of something bigger, that we are connected with something vast. In the hours before and after totality you have to wear protective glasses to look at the sun, to prevent damage to your eyes. But during the brief time when the moon blocks the last of the sun’s rays, you can finally lower your glasses and look directly at the eclipse. It’s like making eye contact with the universe.

“In my practice, usually if someone says, ‘I feel insignificant,’ that’s a negative thing. But the meaning shifts during an eclipse,” Russo says. To feel insignificant in the moon’s shadow instead means that your sense of self shrinks, that your ego shrinks, she says.

The scale of our “big picture” often changes after witnessing the awe of totality, too. “When you zoom out—really zoom out—it blows away our differences,” Goldy says. When you sit in the shadow of a celestial rock blocking the light of a star 400 times its size that burns at 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface, suddenly that argument with your partner, that bill sitting on your counter or even the differences among people’s beliefs, origins or politics feel insignificant. When we shift our perspective, connection becomes boundless.

You don’t need to wait for the next eclipse to feel this way. As we travel through life, we lose our relationship with everyday awe. Remember what that feels like? It’s the way a dog looks at a treat or the way my toddler points to the “blue sky!” outside his car window in the middle of rush hour traffic. To find awe, we have to surrender our full attention to the beauty around us. During an eclipse, that comes easily. In everyday life, we may need to be more intentional.

“Totality kick-starts our ability to experience wonder,” Russo says. And with that kick start, maybe we can all use our wonderment faculties more—whether that means pausing for a moment during a morning walk, a hug or a random sunset on a Tuesday. In the continental U.S., we won’t experience another total eclipse until 2044. Let’s not wait until then to seek awe and connection.