Dressing up posture: The interactive effects of posture and clothing on competency judgements

Abstract

Individuals often receive judgements from others based on their clothing and their posture. While both of these factors have been found to influence judgements of competency independently, their relative importance in impression formation is yet to be investigated. We address this by examining interactive effects of posture and clothing on four competency measures: confidence, professionalism, approachability, and likeliness of a high salary. Participants rated photographs of both male and female models pictured in different postures (strong, neutral, weak) in smart clothing (a suit for males; both a trouser suit and skirt suit for females) and casual clothing. We confirm that posture manipulations affected judgements of individuals differently according to the clothing they were pictured in. The nature of these interactions varied by gender and, for women, competency judgements differed according to attire type (trouser or skirt suit). The implications of these findings in relation to impression formation are discussed.

Dominance or prestige: A review of the effects of power poses and other body postures

“…However, there was no control group, and this may have been a crucial omission. In a different study, when a neutral posture was included, competence ratings made by observers were in fact higher for people in HPPs than for people in LPPs, but they were highest in controls (Gurney, Howlett, Pine, Tracey, & Moggridge, 2017), suggesting that HPPs are not the best way to signal competence.…”

“…The findings on effects of body positions on observers also seem to be in line with the dominance‐prestige framework: Participants performing HPPs did not perform better in job interviews (e.g., Klaschinski et al, 2017). Further, participants in neutral body positions (that resemble UPs) received higher competence ratings than participants in HPPs (e.g., Gurney et al, 2017). However, we inferred this conclusion from studies that looked only at poses, and there are no posture studies that directly compared competence ratings of UPs with controls.…”

“…Thus, differences cannot be clearly attributed to one of the conditions. This is crucial because, for poses, the relationship between low and high power and the effects of positions might not be linear (e.g., see competence ratings in Gurney et al, 2017). With respect to power per se, Schaerer, du Plessis, Yap, and Thau (2018) demonstrated that for various outcomes, low power did not lead to the opposite effects of high power, and this is why they recommend the use of three‐cell designs.…”

The psychology of clothing

“…As formal clothing is associated with enhanced social distance, Slepian proposes that wearing formal clothing will enhance abstract cognitive processing. Gurney et al [41] confirmed that competency ratings of individuals vary by their posture [42,43,44] and their attire [45,46]. In their study they also confirmed an interaction effect of posture and clothing by showing that perceptions of people in different attire can be altered by the posture they adopt while wearing it.…”

Perception and Action in a Social Context

“…Posture-based personality judgements also interact with extrinsic cues like clothing; for example, individuals perceive actors in suits as more competent(Gurney et al, 2017).4 Perception of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009029049 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core.…”