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Business Casual and the Psychology of Office Attire or Who Cares What you Wear to Work as Long as you Perform?
| Guest post by: Joni Johnston |
Article Overview: No, it shouldn’t matter if a woman wears a tight, pencil skirt or a man wears Birkenstocks and Bermudas as long as s/he excels at work. But know that to some people, it does. Here's why.
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Free Download - Business Casual and the Psychology of Office Attire or Who Cares What you Wear to Work as Long as you Perform? By Joni Johnston |
Business Casual and the Psychology of Office Attire or Who Cares What you Wear to Work as Long as you Perform?
In an ideal world, no one would. However, in the real world, we form an impression of a person in the first 30 seconds to 2 minutes after we meet him or her.
Okay, you may be thinking. I'm willing to sacrifice a little upfront pr for comfort since I'll have the chance to impress them later with my business acumen. Don't count on it. Recent research suggests that, not only are first impressions hard to change, if someone makes a negative first impression on us, we're less likely to seek that person out again. So while initial impressions can be changed, human nature works against us having the opportunity to do so.
Why do Clothes Matter?
You are seen before you are heard. As a result, before you open your mouth, your appearance has already spoken volumes about you. Whether the other person realizes it or not, s/he has already made assumptions about your competence, intelligence, judgment and so forth. In fact, according to Dr. Albert Mehrabian's research, our visual image (physical appearance and body language) accounts for over half of the first impressions we create.
Are People That Superficial?
Yes we are, although not quite in the way you might think. Because we have so much going on in our brains, our ancestors learned to make mental shortcuts, i.e., simple rules to help us categorize and make quicker decisions about things we encounter. Unfortunately, these often lead to unconscious biases where we tend to see what we expect. In other words, people are affected by your appearance, whether or not they realize it, and whether or not they think appearance is important.
So here's how this works when it comes to what we wear. Two psychological shortcuts people use are the "halo effect" and its opposite, the "devil effect." The "halo effect" is our tendency, if our first impression involves one or two positive things about a person, to develop a generally positive overall impression, sometimes in spite of later evidence to the contrary. And, of course, the "devil effect" is the opposite side of the same coin.
A Lapse in Judgment or Fashion Faux Pas?
In other words, the reason what we wear to work is important is because of what our attire represents. What's really being evaluated by what you wear is your judgment - how well you understand the social rules of the context you are in and whether or not you are willing to follow them.
An attorney who shows up for court has the same skill level whether he's dressed in blue jeans or business formal. However, he is likely to get a very different reception from the judge, who is likely to assume a Levi-clad attorney either doesn't know the social codes or doesn't care about them. And, from a client's perspective, a professional who doesn't "look" like one isn't likely to inspire confidence that she can excel as one.
The Bottom Line
No, it shouldn't matter if a woman wears a tight, pencil skirt or a man wears Birkenstocks and Bermudas as long as s/he excels at work. But know that to some people, it does.
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Related Forum Posts
Clothing Niche
- Yasunori, can you dig deeper into the clothing niche? e.g. Business Casual for people 6ft and taller (men only, women only or both).
Victoria Secret is big in Canada because they don't have retail Stores here and the only way to get their product in Canada is thru online purchases. They have a great Hassle-free return policy too.
Books for Women Entrepreneurs
- There's a thread for good books in the Resources folder, but it doesn't target books for businesswomen particularly, so I figured I'd start such a thread here.
It doesn't matter how successful you are in your business - it's always possible to learn something new.
In subsequent posts I give Table of Contents and brief descriptions for various titles - most of them devoted to the businesswoman - and sometimes a review. If anyone else has read a review, or has read the book and found it useful, please comment!
1. The Old Girl's Network
2. Mother's Work
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Re: How do you budget your life?
- Here is my financial management categories for today:
15% Long Term Savings;
10% Home Expenses;
45% Business and Marketing charges;
10% Friends (Meeting);
20$ Scientific and Law Books.
But this will change when it is August or September.
Orxan
My entry
- 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read
- this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody.
2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto.
3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book
Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Ways To Improve Your Alexa Ranking 1-5
- I came across a blog post that listed 20 ways to improve your Alexa ranking and thought it would be worth sharing. There are 20 suggestions in total that I'll spread out over the next 4 days to give you some food for thought:
1. Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step.
2. Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website. I did this a few days ago and receive a fair amount of clicks every day. According to some, each click counts as a visit even if the toolbar is not used by the visitor.
3. Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers. Be sure to link to Alexa’s full explanation of their toolbar and tracking system so your readers know what installing the toolbar or extension entails.
4. Work in an Office or own a company? Get the Alexa toolbar or SS Firefox extension installed on all computers and set your website as the homepage for all browsers. Perhaps it will be useful to note that this may work only when dynamic or different IPs are used.
5. Get friends to review and rate your Alexa website profile. Not entirely sure of its impact on rankings but it might help in some way.
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