“Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.”
There’s more truth to that saying than many believe. The conventional wisdom interprets that saying to mean that the way you dress sends an unspoken message to others about yourself that may actually raise or lower your status in their eyes. There is a lot of truth in that.
However, it also sends a message to yourself.
Back in 2016, Scientific American published an article about various studies on how the way people dressed affected their performance in certain tests. The results speak for themselves.
- People who dressed in formal business attire performed better in cognitive tests measuring abstract thinking. It’s implied that a business suit conveys feelings of power.
- Men who dressed up negotiated better deals in games involving negotiation with a partner.
- When people wore a white lab coat, they made far fewer mistakes on attention-demanding tasks.
The last test is particularly notable. Conducted in 2012, researchers asked certain subjects to don a white lab coat similar to what a doctor would wear. This conveys an unspoken message of intelligence. Subjects performed better when they wore a doctor’s coat. However, when told that it was a painter’s smock, subjects demonstrated no such improvement in cognitive focus. Similarly, when the coat was hung on a rack in the same room, there was no such intelligence. To get the impression of intelligence, subjects not only had to know that the coat was the attire of an intelligent person, they also had to wear it.
The authenticity of the clothing in the subject’s mind is just as important. Going back to Scientific American, some women in a test wore expensive-looking sunglasses they were told were counterfeits. Subsequently, they were more likely to cheat on tests with cash payouts, and they were more likely to regard other people with more suspicion.
So if you work in a casual office, does this mean you should start wearing a suit and tie while everyone else is wearing t-shirts and sneakers? Absolutely not. However, you can start dressing one step better than others. If everyone wears t-shirts and jeans, wear a polo shirt, khaki chinos, and leather shoes. If your office is business casual, throw on a sport coat or blazer. If you like the look you are currently sporting, up the level of presentation by investing in better fitting and higher quality clothes.
As the old joke goes, you don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the other guy.