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Impact of Clothing on Impressions of Personal Characteristics and Writing Ability
Author(s) -
Lapitsky Mary,
Smith Cynthia M.
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
home economics research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.372
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1552-3934
pISSN - 0046-7774
DOI - 10.1177/1077727x8100900407
Subject(s) - clothing , psychology , social psychology , aesthetics , art , law , political science
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.