Impact of Clothing on Impressions of Personal Characteristics and Writing Ability

Abstract

The study was designed to determine if attractive clothing had a more positive effect than unattractive clothing on a perceiver's impressions of the personal characteristics of the writer of an essay and the qualities of the essay. Perceivers who assigned high interest/importance to clothing were expected to favorably rate both personal characteristics of an attractively dressed writer and the essay. A negative relationship was anticipated between high clothing interest/importance scores and ratings of an unattractively dressed writer and the essay. A total of 160 college coeds were divided equally among 8 experimental treatments: interest ing/uninteresting essay, two writers, and attractive/unattractive clothing. Significantly higher ratings were found with attractive clothing for the 5 personal traits and for 4 of the 5 essay qualities. Significant positive correlations occurred between high clothing interest/importance scores and ratings of personal traits and essay qualities. No significant negative correlations occurred between any evaluative ratings and high clothing interest/importance scores.