Enclothed Cognition; Science but Make it Slay

How the Clothes We Wear Impact Our Psyche

What makes me love fashion so much is it’s relationship to culture. I love studying the history of fashion - spanning decades, political movements, world cultures, subcultures, etc. I love the way that clothing interacts with the humans that wear it, essentially the psychology and sociology of clothes. I just learned a topical new term and immediately opened my laptop and started typing - this theory shows direct effects of clothing playing with the psyche, and is the spark of writing inspiration I’ve been waiting for. This term is Enclothed Cognition. She sounds gorgeous, doesn’t she? She is, and she’s an absolutely fascinating scientific theory that is my newest hyper-fixation. According to sciencedirect.com, the definition of enclothed cognition is “the systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer's psychological processes”. Simply put - clothing can hold major significance in how a wearer thinks, feels, and acts.

We’ll start with the science of it all before getting into the real world. This is a very briefly summarized version of an incredibly in-depth psychological study that I recommend you look further into later. (Full study here). I’m not a scientist, I just like clothes.

The term enclothed cognition was born in 2012, when Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky - two social psychologists - conducted studies featuring white lab coats. Their first experiment consisted of essentially brain-games between two groups - one group dressed in lab coats, the other group not dressed in lab coats. In these exercises, the group dressed in lab coats made half of the mistakes those non-lab-coat-wearing folks did. Half! The second experiment, and my personal favorite, had two different groups dressed in the same lab coats. The difference between the two groups was in the symbolic association of the lab coat - one group was told it was a doctor’s coat, while the other group was told it was a painter’s coat. This is how wild the human brain is - the group wearing what was deemed the “painter’s coat” performed the worst in the exercises.

Not only did simply wearing a lab coat put Group #1 in a completely different headspace, but the wearers’ associations with what that lab coat meant put them in a different headspace. White lab coats are just fabric and trims sewn together for one to wear to work, but the symbolic meaning and subconscious associations we, as a whole, have with lab coats hold major significance. Why do we feel smarter wearing a lab coat? Why do we feel the smartest being told it is specifically a doctor’s lab coat? It is still our little non-doctor brains putting the coats on.

In Adam, H., & Galinsky, A.D., Enclothed cognition, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (2012), the social psychologists list several past studies they referenced for their study, including that sports teams wearing black uniforms perform more aggressively than those in non-black uniforms, and that women wearing bikinis perform worse in math while wearing one. (Put me to that test, I’ll crush it).

Here’s the nugget I really love about enclothed cognition - it’s obvious the clothing we wear impacts how other people view us, but this proves that it greatly impacts the way we view ourselves, and how it impacts the way we interact with the world / each other.

I’m more likely to join in on the line-dancing lesson at the bar if I’m wearing my cowboy boots. I’m going to enjoy the Renaissance Faire more if I’m wearing ye olde corset dress. I’m more likely to get productive work done when working from home if I ditch the sweatpants and put on a real outfit (something comfy to work from the couch in, though. I’m not a monster). I am almost incapable of getting any meaningful work done unless I have mentally put myself in a place of being ready - which entails physically getting myself ready. This is the case for going on a date, going out with friends, job interviews, even casual coffee shop hangs. It’s like the idea “dress for the job you want, not the job you have”, but that job is how you live your life. It’s like our suit of armor going into battle, even if it’s baggy jeans and sneakers. It’s you making a conscious decision that can dictate how you feel about yourself subconsciously.

One last example I’ll give is from every baddie’s favorite movie - The Devil Wear’s Prada. My favorite line in Meryl Streep’s famed cerulean monologue is a sleeper line, “Oh, you think this has nothing to do with you.” She goes on to drag Anne Hathaway through the mud, lecturing her on how the sweater she is currently wearing is currently at it’s own place in the fashion lifecycle. Her discount bin sweater is screaming volumes about her as a person, whether she likes it or is even aware of it. The clothes you choose to wear when getting dressed in the morning are setting your own self-identification for the day in motion, even if you are trying to make a conscious choice to not participate in fashion. Once Anne Hathaway decides to start dressing the part, she immediately carries herself with improved confidence, and literally does significantly better at her job. (I know we started with science and are ending with The Devil Wears Prada, but you shouldn’t be coming here to learn scientific facts anyways.)

I really enjoyed this foray into a vaguely scientific world. The history and sociology of fashion is what gets me up in the morning (and the “now” of fashion I guess, because job). I am currently looking into taking some evening writing courses because I have so much fun writing silly little things. I mean it this time when I say I will be posting on the blog more, now that life has calmed down a bit, even though the calm never lasts long. Please let me know if there’s any fashion-y or life-y things you’re dying to read about - I have some juicy topics coming up that I can’t wait for y’all to feast your eyes on.

‘Till then, your sleepover host Haley.