Does dressing affect people’s perceptions toward you?

We know about some of science behind how the way we dress may affect how people view us. Sometimes what we wear can inform passerby of our type of employment, as well as our ambitions, emotions and spending habits. This is what called ” Social psychology of dressing”. In order to clarify what we mean by this term, firstly, we need to define separately ” what is social psychology” and ” what is dressing”. The term dress has been defined by dress scholars Mary Ellen Roach and Joanne Eicher in 1992. By dressing they mean total arrangement of outwardly detectable body modifications and all material objects added to it in the form of body supplements. They divided body supplements into several groups, such as permanent ( teeth straitening) and temporary ( jewelry, deodorants, make up and so on). Body modifications and body supplements can affect one, several, or all human senses. (Calefato,2004). Thus, dress can change how body looks, tastes, smells, feels and sounds.(Aronson,2010). Accordingly, it can influence people’s attitude and perceptions as well. The way you dress can tell many things about you: your nationality, gender, age, social-economic status, interests and values. Your style sometimes may give a message or an information to your surrounding.

Literature Review

As an extension of the research addressing the influence of clothing impressions of others is the study that examines the consequences of social perceptional impressions. In order to prove the argument that dressing significantly influences people’s perceptions toward each other which leads to several behaviors and attitudes a team of researchers and academicians as Kim K.P Johnson, Jeong-Ju Yoo and Minjeong Kim (2008) content analyzed ninety three research studies, published from 1955 to 2008. All these brief studies demonstrated that dressing significantly impacts perceptions of observers. For instance, Sharon Lennon and her research colleagues Leslie Davis (1984) found in two separate studies that the way customers dress in expensive stores influences the salespersons’ perceptions about them, that is why some of customers are not served quickly, because sellers think that they do not have this capacity to pay for such expensive good. Another source I have used for my paper is a research which had been made by Lawrence and Watson in 1991. They conducted an experiment in order to show the great impact of outfit on other people’s perception. During the public service challenge the same woman was asking people to give money for the fund of struggle with thalassemia first in a nurse uniform, and then in an ordinary dress .However, she was not a doctor or a nurse. 83% of people gave money to the “nurse” telling that nurse was more convincingly than the “other” lady.

Nepp M.Holl’s book “Nonverbal communication” also provided good information on functions of clothing, which I mentioned above. The book was helpful with several interesting experiments conducted on this topic, which helped me to do my own experiment.

A brief study by Bickman also investigates that clothing is the first thing in people that we all pay attention. It is the most important factor that influences people’s perception specially in making first impression. Most of the times inappropriate dress is a reason for rejecting in job. The way we look determines our values, whether you are conservative or not , your profession and etc.

In 1990 researcher Mary Lynn Damhorst, in studying dress, conducted an analysis of 109 impression formation studies to determine the kind of information that was communicated by dress. She found that in the more than 81% of studies the content of information messaged by dress was competence, power or intelligence and in 67% the messages were about personality, sociability and mood. Similar example of this type of research is a brief study conducted by Dorothy Behling, who was a dress scholar and Elizabeth Williams, a high school teacher (1991). They investigated perceptions of intelligence and scholastic ability among high school students and teachers. The participants were presented by varied photographs of male and female students that were unknown to participants. The dressing styles of the students were different so that half of the students were wearing jeans and t-shirts and the other half of students were in a suit and tie. For both students and teachers, the dressing style worn affected the perceptions and impressions formed. So the result came out with a lower rate in intelligence and scholastic ability of students who wear cutoff jeans and t-shirts than the ones who are in suit.