Mark Twain said "The clothes make the man," and new research indicates that clothing impacts not only how other people view us, but how we view ourselves. A new study reported this week in The New York Times showed that the clothes we wear actually can impact how we think, a process called "clothed cognition," the effects of clothing on cognitive processes.
Researchers at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University presented several groups of undergraduates with a white lab coat. Some students were told it was a doctor's coat and asked to wear it while taking cognitive tests. Other students were told the coat was a painter's coat while taking the cognitive exams, while a third group of students took tests while wearing their street clothes.
The students who wore the white coat believing it to belong to a doctor showed the greatest improvement in their ability to pay attention. As the Times explains it: "If you wear a white coat that you believe belongs to a doctor, your ability to pay attention increases sharply. But if you wear the same white coat believing it belongs to a painter, you will show no such improvement." The researchers concluded that clothes put the wearer in different psychological states.
It's amazing to think that clothes- and what you believe about those clothes- can actually make you perform better on an exam. Definitely a good reason to feel good about what we wear every day!
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