What We Wear Matters

The way we adorn the body shell we live in can significantly affect both our self-perceptions and how others perceive us. My considerable hitch-hiking experiences during my college days taught me early that a neat appearing young woman (looking apprepriately hopeful, by the way) was more kempt to be offered rides than one with a more unkempt look. You may have noted from your own personal experiences that what you wear can significantly alter your feelings about yourself on a particular day. Bright, cheery colors tend to elicit positive comments, which in turn, help us feel good about ourselves.

Consider some examples of how clothes influence the behavior of others. One enterprising researcher arranged to have a thirty-one year old male model approach an intersection crowded with other pedestrians and either obey or violate the traffic signal. An interesting thing happened. When he walked against the red light while dressed neatly in a coat and tie, significantly more people would follow his example by disobeying the stop signal than was the case when he was dressed in plain everday work clothes.

Somewhat similar results were obtained in a novel experiment that involved placing a dime in pay phone return slots and then having men and women in two kinds of dress approach using these phones with the following request: "Excuse me, I think I might left a dime in this phone booth a few minutes ago. Did you find it?" Half the time the men wore suits and ties and the women wore neat dresses and a dress coat. The other half of the time the men wore work clothes and the women appeared in generally unkempt-looking shirts and blouses. Significantly, more people returned the dime when they were approached by the well-dressed man and women.

What we wear does matter. We may want others to love and accept us for who we really are, but who we are in perceived by the beholder as a total package, and clothes, it appears , are the wrappings.

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