The Cognitive Consequences of Formal Clothing

Abstract

Drawing from literature on construal-level theory and the psychological consequences of clothing, the current work tested whether wearing formal clothing enhances abstract cognitive processing. Five studies provided evidence supporting this hypothesis. Wearing more formal clothing was associated with higher action identification level (Study 1) and greater category inclusiveness (Study 2). Putting on formal clothing induced greater category inclusiveness (Study 3) and enhanced a global processing advantage (Study 4). The association between clothing formality and abstract processing was mediated by felt power (Study 5). The findings demonstrate that the nature of an everyday and ecologically valid experience, the clothing worn, influences cognition broadly, impacting the processing style that changes how objects, people, and events are construed.

Go beyond just paying: Effects of payment method on level of construal

“…When an event happens in the distant future, in a remote place, involves a person who is not close to the self, or is not likely to happen, this event is more likely be construed at a high or abstract level (Fujita, Henderson, Eng, Trope & Liberman, 2006;Liberman & Trope, 1998;Liberman et al, 2002;Liviatan, Trope & Liberman, 2008;Wakslak, Trope, Liberman & Alony, 2006). Recently, scholars in psychology and marketing have paid attention to subtle situational factors that might affect mental construals, such as the role people play in a transaction (Irmak, Wakslak & Trope, 2013), the darkness of the environment (Steidle, Werth & Hanke, 2011), and the clothes people wear (Slepian, Ferber, Gold & Rutchick, 2015). In the present research, we are interested in whether people construe information at different levels depending on whether they pay with cash or with a credit card.…”

The influence of social distance on speech behavior: Formality variation in casual speech

“…The formal confederates, on the contrary, were higher in social status than our participants. Furthermore, clothing was used as a means to in-and decrease social distance between participant and confederate, because it has a major impact on their appearance and perceived social status (Slepian et al 2015).…”

“…This supposedly helped the confederates to play their role convincingly, because the way a person dresses does not only influence other persons (cf. our participants), but that person him-or herself too (Hannover and Kühnen 2002;Slepian et al 2015). The formal male confederate was dressed in a dark suit with tie and the female confederate wore a black skirt with a beige jacket.…”

Clothing and People - A Social Signal Processing Perspective

“…A-A4 -Clothing is considered as an indicator of socioeconomic status [39], [19] and personality traits [36]. According to Johnson et al [18], the most investigated concepts using dress manipulations were dress, status, and attractiveness and listed the most experimented dress manipulation to study the effect of clothing on attractiveness concept as grooming, tidiness, makeup, and, natural physical appearance such as hair and eye color, height and, weight (see [18], Table 3).…”

“…Other studies shows that clothing correlates with the personality traits of people in a way that people with formal clothing perceive actions and objects, the inter-relationship and the intra-relationship between them in a more meaningful manner [36]. Clothing can make a person feel comfortable or not in a social situation [16] and can be considered as a determinant of how long it takes for strangers to trust one and how much they may trust them [40].…”