You Are What You Wear?

Do you feel better about yourself when you wear a new silk blouse or feel more powerful when you wear an expensive new pair of pumps? Turns out, it’s not just in your head. You are what you wear, suggests new research from Northwestern University. It’s a phenomenon researchers call “enclothed cognition.”

“Clothes cognition is really about becoming the clothes themselves and having them direct who you are and how you act in the world,” study author Adam Galinsky said. ”When we are putting on a suit, we are not only giving impressions to other people, but we are also giving an impression to ourselves. We feel the rich, silk fabric on our arms; that allows us to take on the characteristics of those clothes.”

The researchers examined the phenomenon by having participants put on a white lab coat, describing it as a doctor’s coat. When they saw it as a doctor’s coat, they became more attentive. However, if they put the same coat on and the researchers called it an artist’s coat, or painter’s coat, they didn’t get the same affect. Galinsky says it’s because doctors need to be attentive, and by wearing the coat people took on a “symbolic meaning of what it means to be a doctor, attentive, and smarter.”

Meanwhile, those with the artists coats were found to be more creative.

“If you put on a black T-shirt, you become more aggressive. You put on a nurse’s uniform, you become more helpful,” says Gailinsky.

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