5 Ways Clothes Affect Your Day
They say put your shoes on if you want to get any work done when you work from home.
If you stick around, I’ll unpack that, and why understanding this can change the way you look at your wardrobe.
The act of putting your shoes on sends a subconscious signal to your brain that it’s time to get something done. It’s a simple trick we can play on our minds when we need motivation in that home office.
People say things like “dress for the job you want, not the one you have”. A statement with more weighted truth than you might think. The clothes we choose to wear every day can affect our minds, moods, and even our hormones and success overall. It is as important for men as it is for women. Researchers call this Enclothed Cognition. These are 5 ways your wardrobe might just help you have a better day.
Mood
What if choosing your clothing carefully had the power to change your crappy morning into something better? A woman named Danielle Armstrong is doing just that. Having fought years of depression, Danielle carefully chooses her outfit every day. She calls it #BeatTheBlackDogInStyle. Danielle says she has a couple go-to favorites for lousy days. Bright orange, pink, or happy floral prints. She says it all started as a way of injecting fun into her daily routine, then she realized her outfit affected how she felt about herself, after that it became a tool in her recovery.
Researchers have been connecting mood and clothing for nearly a decade now. A 2012 study by Professor Karen Pine, from the psychology department at the University of Hertfordshire in Britain, noticed that women chose baggy clothes on depressed days. Happy clothes in the study were usually brightly colored and often form fitting.
Even memories were found to be attached to our clothing. If we received a compliment in that scarf, for example, the feeling would return when wearing it again. Likewise, if something negative happened while wearing a certain jacket those feelings could be invoked by simply seeing it hanging in our closet.
What if your morning routine included choosing your mood for the day?
How you see yourself
It’s no secret that we evaluate one another based on what others are wearing, but according to some research it seems we evaluate ourselves in a similar way. For example, a study published in 2015, determined that a suit increased ability for abstract thought and made the wearer a better negotiator. According to that research the male suit wearer also had a 20% increase in testosterone.
Similarly, women that model their looks off of women they saw as powerful, reported greater confidence in their abilities.
Clothes can affect success
Clothes can even affect how successful we are. Research shows that women who wore swimsuits performed poorly on math tests.
Similarly, people that wore coats they believed were for artists performed worse on tests than those that wore lab coats they believed were for doctors.
Our brains try to match our feelings with our subconscious associations to specific articles of clothing. This is likely why putting on our shoes helps motivate us to get to work.
Casual Clothing Helping Us Connect
Casual Fridays are not an accident.
While formal wear can be great for getting the job done, according to research, we don’t really open up while we wear it. Casual clothing, on the other hand, helps us make connections with people around us and increases our creativity.
Superhero Shirts
Could it be as simple as putting on a superman shirt to increase our confidence? Research says that could be the case.
Professor Karen Pine wanted to know if superhero clothing changed the way we view ourselves. Not only did the subjects feel more confident, but they even seemed to believe they were physically stronger.
Those wearing the shirts rated themselves as more likeable, and, when asked about their strength, believed they were stronger than their counterparts still wearing regular clothing.
In similar studies uniforms were shown to make the wearer conscious of their responsibilities and more focused on their job.
I can’t help but see a connection between uniforms and superhero shirts. After all, Superman is wearing his uniform of choice. From where I’m sitting, it’s no surprise we present ourselves as the character while wearing it.
This brings us to my final point. If something as simple as a t-shirt can affect the way we see ourselves, imagine what a costume can do for us boring adults.
Imagine, for just a moment, what a costume can do for a struggling child.
Now that you know how clothing choices can affect your day I have just one last question.
Who are you going to be today?
