In the business setting, managers encourage employees to ‘dress
the part’. Does wearing appropriate
attire affect your attitude and your productivity? The answer is absolutely! Most dress codes are established to portray a
certain look or image to those on the outside.
Think of a lawyer, can you see him or her arguing a case in sweatpants
and a t-shirt? What about a police officer
– see them showing up in scrubs with their badge pinned to their shirt? The image that a business wants to portray is
ingrained in the dress code, although there is more to this image than what it
portrays to those on the outside.
Research has been found that the clothing that we wear affects our own
behavior. Your attitude is defined by
your attire.
In a study called, Enclothed Cognition, conducted by Hajo
Adam and Adam Galinsky at Northwestern University studied subjects who were
given white coats to wear. Some were
told that their white coat was that of a doctor and other were told that theirs
was a white coat of a painter. The study
found that those subjects, who wore the doctor’s coat, were more focused than
those wearing the painter’s white coat, even though they were the exact same
coat. It was the perception of wearing a
doctor’s white coat. The subjects in the
doctor’s coat felt and acted like they had more authority, leading them to be
more confident in accomplishing tasks.
In another study conducted by Professor Karen Pine from the
University of Hertfordshire. She found
that wearing a superman t-shirt actually made her subjects believe that they
were stronger. It gave them more confidence
and the belief that they could achieve more.
While no official studies have been completed on dressing as a
super-hero in your business environment, it does give some interesting insight
to the psychology of what you wear.
Perhaps this is an opportunity to introduce super-hero Fridays!
While it’s obvious that what you wear affects others’
perceptions, an employee’s behavior is often tied to their attire. The clothing that we wear puts us in a
different mindset. This can be
demonstrated with two different types of clothing, pajamas and a suit. We typically associate pajamas with lazing around
where we connect a suit and tie to professionalism and hard work. These associations carry over into our
workplace. Many would laugh if we showed
up to work in our pajamas, yet, who hasn’t had a co-worker who has been a
little ‘too casual’ on casual Fridays? In
an article from Dress for Success, author Jennifer L. Scott states, “Every
morning when you get dressed, you make a choice of how you would like to
present yourself to the world. As a
poised person in the workplace, your wardrobe choices should be appropriate,
professional and reflect your individual style.”
The decision of what to wear is ultimately up to the
individual, yet management plays a critical role in modeling the desired
behavior. Empowering managers are one
who see the benefits of ensuring a company’s dress code is one that fits the
business and the environment. They are
often the ones who set an example and discuss the dress code with employees. The clothing we wear does affect our behavior
and attitude.
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