Research Design Connection: Clothing and Behavior

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | April 13th, 2015

Thinking in formal clothing has cognitive implications. Space design, among other factors, can support wearing formal clothing and communicate that formal clothing is appropriate. Sieplan and his crew found that “Wearing formal clothing enhances abstract cognitive processing…The findings demonstrate that the nature of an everyday and ecologically valid experience, the clothing worn, influences cognition broadly, impacting the processing style that changes how objects, people, and events are construed.” Michael Sieplan, Simon Ferber, Joshua Gold, and Abraham Rutchick. “The Cognitive Consequences of Formal Clothing.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, in press. Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a …