😊Dress and Human Behavior

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The purpose of this article is to present a comprehensive review and analysis of published

research that investigated relationships between the dress of an individual and how that dress

affected others’ behavior toward the individual. Existing published research was analyzed to

determine the types of behaviors investigated, the types of dress manipulations, whether dress

had a significant effect, theory used to guide the research, and who the participant population

was in the research. Research methods were also reviewed. Sources of data were 93 studies

published from 1955 to 2004. Researchers overwhelmingly investigated helping behavior. The

most frequently operationalized concepts using dress manipulations were labeled “dress,”

“status,” and “attractiveness.” Researchers using dress or attractiveness or attire as the primary

dress manipulation did not necessarily control for other dress variables (e.g., makeup, hair-

style) in their research. Most of this research was not guided by theory.

Theories, Models, and Other

Evidence Suggesting That Dress

Affects Human Behavior

There is theoretical reasoning in addition

to empirical evidence suggesting that dress

influences human behavior, although we

find no theory that explicitly isolates dress

as a factor that affects behavior. In this

section, we offer three perspectives that can

be used to frame research about dress and

human behavior: symbolic interaction,

Livesley and Bromley’s (1973) model of

impression formation, and the S-O-R model

(Mehrabian & Russell, 1974). In addition to

these three perspectives, Nagasawa, Hutton,

and Kaiser (1991) offer an overarching par-

adigm, the S-O-R paradigm, as a framework

for generally integrating social science

models used to study clothing and human

behavior. As such, the S-O-R paradigm sub-

sumes the three perspectives offered here,

but does not limit its focus to behavior

evoked by dress which is our focus.

2. Symbolic Interaction

Symbolic interaction has its roots in soci-

ology and has been used to frame thinking

about what effect dress might have on the

     

 behavior of self and others. Interactionists

believe that individuals make the experi-

ences that they live in (Denzin, 1992), by

behaving toward things in terms of the mean-

ings these things have for them (Blumer,

1969). These meanings “come from interac-

tion and are shaped by the self-reflections that

people bring to their situations” (Denzin,

p. 25). Symbolic interaction, the merger of

self and social interaction, is the chief means

“by which humans are able to form joint acts”

and it is these behaviors that comprise “the

social life of a human society” (Blumer,

1981, p. 153). These behaviors might be ver-

bal or nonverbal. These behaviors, especially

if nonverbal, might constitute observable

human action which is the focus of our study.

Interested in dress and other aspects of

appearance, clothing and textile researchers

have sought to understand how dress serves

as a communication tool and plays a role in

the establishment of personal identities.

Gregory Stone (1962), in a classic statement

about the role of appearance in social inter-

action, noted that an array of information

(e.g., identity, values, moods, attitudes)

    

3.-Impression Formation

Livesley and Bromley (1973) suggested

that the dress of an individual could affect

another’s behavior toward that individual.

These psychiatrists theorized that impression

formation occurs in a temporal sequence

involving four phases. During the first phase

the perceiver selectively perceives informa-

tion that is available about another, noticing

cues that have some personal relevance or

significance. For example, the perceiver may

look at an individual’s hair length. In the sec-

ond phase the perceiver infers personal char-

acteristics of the target person based on the

cues selected. A man with long hair may be

perceived as more liberal than a man with a

shaved head. During the third phase the per-

ceiver infers other attributes the person might

possess. For example, a perceiver uses hair

to infer an individual is liber

4-Dress Concepts Under Investigation

Dress had significant effects on the

behavior of others in 85.3% of the studies.

The most frequently investigated concepts

were labeled “dress” (18.1%), “status”

(13.8%), and “attractiveness” (10.6%; see

Table 3). Researchers using dress or

attractiveness or attire as the primary dress

manipulation did not necessarily control

for other dress variables (e.g., makeup,

hairstyle) in their research.

Patterns emerged in the ways in which

appearance was manipulated to convey the

variable under investigation. For example,

the dress concept was primarily operational-

ized by presenting a neat versus sloppy

appearance or by varying the level of for-

mality (e.g., formal vs. casual). Similarity

was operationalized rather consistently by

changing the appearance of a stimulus per-

son from “straight” to “hippie” (see Table

3). In these studies similarity was opera-

tionalized as clothing similar to normative

dress. As many of these studies took place

in the 1970s, dissimilar in most cases meant

appearing like a hippie.

Status and dress as labeled by the

researchers were the concepts investigated

with the widest range of behaviors. These

behaviors included helping behaviors,

obedience, and invasion of interaction ter-

ritory. Status was used primarily to inves-

tigate invasion of interaction territory,

whereas dress was used to investigate

helping behaviors and obedience (s