Can Clothes Influence Your Behaviour and Thoughts?

Clothes not only reflect your style but are a powerful tool that can influence your thoughts and behaviour. But how?

From the colours we choose to the styles we wear, our clothes have always acted as a medium of self-expression. It is, in fact, this aspect that we explored in one of our previous articles.

If you haven’t already read it, go check out: Do Your Clothes Reflect Your Identity?

Beyond mere fashion statements, psychological research suggests an intriguing connection between our clothes and thoughts and behaviours, hinting at a subtle but important association.

We will dive into just that and explore the effect of clothes on our cognition and why that is the case.

Shortcuts For The Busy Reader

How Do Your Clothes Impact You?

Clothes Can Affect You Negatively Too

Why Your Clothes Influence Your Behaviour And Thoughts?

How Do Your Clothes Impact You?

Clothes have a subtle impact on your psychological processes. Let us take a look at a few studies that bring this to light.

One fascinating aspect is how clothing influences our thoughts and behaviours, especially if it is associated with certain professions.

For instance, a recent study by Belén López-Pérez and colleagues observed this in the context of nursing scrubs or uniforms. They revealed that ordinary people who wore a nurse’s scrub tended to showcase more helping behaviours and empathetic tendencies. Even wearing Red Cross attire tended to spark similar emotions.

People exhibit altruistic behaviour when they wear nursing scrubs.

Interestingly, attire not only influences our behaviours, but it can also affect our thoughts as well. Consider this 2015 research, which revealed that people who were formally dressed showed better abilities at abstract thinking than those who were casually dressed. Abstract thinking offers the foundation for problem-solving, critical analysis, and nurturing creativity—all of which are important in many parts of life, but especially in the context of employment.

Even the colours we wear tend to exert some influence on us. For instance, red and black are associated with aggression, while green and blue with calmness. This impact of colour on our behaviour becomes particularly noticeable in the realm of sports.

Black and red are associated with higher aggression, as seen in sports.

A very interesting study examined the behaviour of the teams that played in the National Football League and the National Hockey League. It showed that across the leagues, the teams sporting black jerseys tended to be the ones that were more penalised for aggressive conduct when compared to their counterparts donning non-black jerseys.

Whether it's the psychological association of black with aggression that affected players or the biased perception of referees to view players in black jerseys as more aggressive, these findings do raise pertinent questions on the impact of jersey colours on competitive conduct in sports.

Similarly, another study by Russell Hill and Robert Barton examined the outcomes of four combat sports at the 2004 Olympic Games. Across the games, they identified that the players who wore red won more rounds than their counterparts wearing blue. Furthermore, their research also revealed that the players in red exhibited more aggression and dominance when compared to players in other colours.

These studies highlight how perceptions of colours can influence behaviour. When the players don specific colours, they begin to incorporate the associated traits, subsequently affecting their performance.

This effect on our thoughts and behaviour is not just limited to clothes but also extends to accessories as well.

Not only clothing, but also accessories such as a wrist watch, can have an impact on us.

Take, for example, the wristwatch, a timeless classic in our wardrobes. What we don’t know about it is that its inclusion in our daily attire can have a significant influence on us. A study conducted by David Ellis and Rob Jenkins indicates that those who tend to wear wristwatches regularly are more conscientious (a trait associated with impulse control, responsibility, and reliability) than those who do not wear them regularly.

What these studies underscore is the surprising yet profound influence that our attire can have on our cognitive processes, which we must not only acknowledge but also effectively harness.

Clothes Can Affect You Negatively Too

When looking at the impact of clothing, it would be amiss if we did not acknowledge its negative effects. Studies over the past couple of years have explored how our attire can influence our actions negatively.

Take, for example, this 2010 study by Francesca Gino and her colleagues, which suggests that wearing counterfeit clothing is associated with dishonest behaviours. This is because this apparel makes the wearer feel less authentic, resulting in them engaging in dishonest behaviours such as cheating, lying, etc.

Sometimes, however, the impact of clothes can have quite serious outcomes.

A notable example would be the controversial 1971 psychological study, the Stanford Prison Experiment, which divided participants into guards and prisoners. Each group was assigned uniforms, with the guards wearing khaki attire, whistles, mirrored sunglasses, and batons and the prisoners wearing a smock dress with their number on it and a cap to cover their hair.

These outfits dramatically transformed the behaviour of both groups, such that the guards began to feel more powerful and exert more authority and control. The prisoners, on the other hand, felt stripped of their individuality and self-worth and became more compliant and submissive to the abuse by the guards.

Police uniforms give the wearer with a sense of power, whereas prisoners outfits strip them of their individuality.

More recently, a study on the impact of police uniforms on decision-making found a strong association between dress and behaviour. Participants who were asked to don a police uniform and participate in a video game simulation in which they could shoot or not shoot targets were more likely to fire on the targets while dressed as officers. This suggests that the uniform gave them a sense of power and authority, which influenced their conduct.

From these studies, we can understand the impact of clothing on our perceptions of power and control, which more often than not operate below our conscious awareness. But these findings urge us to pay close attention to the small decisions that we make about our appearance as they shape our interactions and actions with others.

Why Your Clothes Influence Your Behaviour And Thoughts?

Through this article, we have gone through several examples of how clothes can affect our thoughts and actions, both positively and negatively. But now to the most important part: Why does it impact us at all?

The answer lies in this phenomenon known as enclothed cognition.

It suggests that when we wear certain clothing items, we embody the attributes we associate with them, which then goes on to impact how we think, behave, and feel.

This phenomenon was first studied by Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky back in 2012, where they found that participants who wore a lab coat through the course of the experiment showed better attention on a task as compared to those who did not wear a lab coat.

We internalise the traits associated with the clothes we wear, which is referred to as embodied cognition.

But wait, there is more!

When these participants were divided into two groups, those wearing the “doctor’s coat” performed better in the attention task when compared to those in the “painter’s coat”. Although both groups were given lab coats, the symbolic meaning attached to a doctor’s coat impacted the actions of one group.

It is not just in this instance; if you consider any of the examples discussed above, you will notice a common thread. Whether it be an accessory, colour, or uniform, each of them has symbolic attributes associated with them.

As a result, when we wear those pieces of clothing, we begin to embody the traits that are associated with them. So in the case of a nurse’s scrub, the participants embodied the traits of altruism because those are the qualities that are associated with that attire. The same goes for police uniforms, corporate employees, prisoners, etc.

Although often taken for granted, our clothes and accessories can have a significant impact on how we think, behave, and feel. It would be an error on our part to consider fashion to be a superficial choice, considering how it has and continues to be used as a medium to embody and project certain traits. Recognising its importance motivates us to make conscious choices about our presentation and attire, influencing not just how we are perceived but also shaping our thoughts and behaviour.

​References Adam, H., & Galinsky, A. D. (2012). Enclothed cognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(4), 918–925. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.02.008 Ellis, D. A., & Jenkins, R. (2015). Watch-wearing as a marker of conscientiousness. PeerJ, 3. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1210 Frank, M. G., & Gilovich, T. (1988). The Dark Side of self- and social perception: Black uniforms and aggression in professional sports. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(1), 74–85. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.1.74 Gino, F., Norton, M. I., & Ariely, D. (2010). The counterfeit self. Psychological Science, 21(5), 712–720. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610366545 Hill, R. A., & Barton, R. A. (2005). Red enhances human performance in contests. Nature, 435(7040), 293–293. https://doi.org/10.1038/435293a López-Pérez, B., Ambrona, T., Wilson, E. L., & Khalil, M. (2016). The effect of enclothed cognition on empathic responses and helping behavior. Social Psychology, 47(4), 223–231. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000273 Mendoza, S. A., & Parks-Stamm, E. J. (2019). Embodying the police: The effects of enclothed cognition on shooting decisions. Psychological Reports, 123(6), 2353–2371. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294119860261 Pech, G. P., & Caspar, E. A. (2023). Does the cowl make the monk? the effect of military and Red Cross uniforms on empathy for pain, sense of agency and moral behaviors. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1255835 Slepian, M. L., Ferber, S. N., Gold, J. M., & Rutchick, A. M. (2015). The cognitive consequences of formal clothing. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(6), 661–668. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615579462