Dress for Success: How Clothes Influence Our Performance

Scientific American:

The old advice to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, may have roots in more than simply how others perceive you—many studies show that the clothes you wear can affect your mental and physical performance. Although such findings about so-called enclothed cognition are mostly from small studies in the laboratory that have not yet been replicated or investigated in the real world, a growing body of research suggests that there is something biological happening when we put on a snazzy outfit and feel like a new person.

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Trying too hard to look sharp can backfire. When women donned expensive sunglasses and were told the specs were counterfeit, as opposed to when they thought they were real, they cheated more often on lab experiments with cash payouts. Fake sunglasses also seemed to make women see others’ behavior as suspect. Authors of the study, published in May 2010 in Psychological Science, theorize that counterfeit glasses increase unethical behavior by making their wearers feel less authentic.

Read  the whole story: Scientific American