ReportsEnclothed cognition
Highlights
► We show how clothes systematically influence wearers' psychological processes. ► Three experiments demonstrate that wearing a lab coat increases attention. ► Attention did not increase when the coat was not worn or associated with a painter. ► Attention only increased when the coat was a) worn and b) associated with a doctor. ► The influence of clothes thus depends on wearing them and their symbolic meaning.
Section snippets
Enclothed cognition
Traditional theories of cognition argue that cognitive representations are based on amodal, abstract content. In contrast, theories of embodied cognition (e.g., Barsalou, 1999, Barsalou, 2008, Glenberg, 1997, Niedenthal et al., 2005) argue that cognitive representations are based on modal, perceptual content that is based in the brain's sensory systems for perception (e.g., vision, audition), action (e.g., movement, proprioception), and introspection (e.g., mental states, affect). As physical
Experimental overview
In the current research, we tested our enclothed cognition perspective with respect to lab coats. Lab coats are the prototypical attire of scientists and doctors. Wearing a lab coat thus signifies a scientific focus and an emphasis on being careful and attentive—attributes that involve the importance of paying attention to the task at hand and not making errors. To confirm that people indeed associate a lab coat with attention-related concepts, we recruited 38 people (16 female, 22 male;
Design and participants
Fifty-eight undergraduates (41 females, 19 males; average age: 20.29 years) at a large university in the Midwestern United States participated in the experiment. They were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: wearing a lab coat vs. not wearing a lab coat.
Procedure and experimental manipulation
In the wearing-a-lab-coat condition, participants were asked to wear a disposable white lab coat. To provide a cover story, the experimenter told participants that other participants in prior sessions of this experiment had been wearing
Experiment 2: the importance of symbolic meaning
The results of Experiment 1 demonstrate that wearing a lab coat leads to increased selective attention on a Stroop task. Although these results are highly consistent with our enclothed cognition perspective, our model proposes that enclothed cognition involves two components: physically wearing the clothes and the symbolic meaning of the clothes. In Experiment 1, the two components were confounded, and the second component—the role of the symbolic meaning of the lab coat—was assumed rather than
Experiment 3: beyond mere exposure
The results of Experiment 2 demonstrate that wearing a lab coat leads to increased sustained attention on a comparative visual search task and that this effect depends on both whether the clothes are worn and the symbolic meaning of the clothes: Participants displayed greater sustained attention only when wearing a lab coat described as a doctor's coat, but not when wearing a lab coat described as a painter's coat or when seeing a lab coat described as a doctor's coat.
One intriguing finding
Discussion
The current research provides initial support for our enclothed cognition perspective that clothes can have profound and systematic psychological and behavioral consequences for their wearers. In Experiment 1, participants who wore a lab coat displayed increased selective attention compared to participants who wore their regular clothes. In Experiments 2 and 3, we found robust evidence that this influence of clothing depends on both whether the clothes are worn and the symbolic meaning of the
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