A recent petition in the Supreme Court seeking relief to lawyers in the apex court and high courts from wearing black coats and gowns has raised some interesting questions about the work dress code. These questions are even more relevant in the present times of work from home. When working from home, what clothes should an employee wear for home or office? In a Zoom meeting, does it matter what the employee wears under the camera? And the most important question here is whether these outlandish appearances have any impact on the quality of one’s work, beyond the added hassle of formal-wear and extra laundry bills.
There is no doubt that one’s work attire serves as a mark of identity. We can recognize a policeman in the crowd by his uniform. It therefore makes sense to emphasize a particular type of dress in occupations where such identification is necessary. The person who has the stethoscope in his neck will be identified as a health professional. If so, why should doctors wear white coats?
A study by Helen Xun of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and others, Public Perceptions of Physician Attire and Professionalism in the US, found that physicians who wore white coats were perceived as significantly more experienced, professional, and friendly than doctors who wore white coats. was. Opted for more casual fashion options. So it should come as no surprise that the study found patients to prefer doctors who wore white coats.
Many pieces of clothing carry with them some symbolic meaning and thus certain qualities are attributed to their wearers. For example, a judge’s robe is a symbol of justice. The uniform of a policeman is a symbol of authority. Studies have shown that people who wear coats are generally considered to be intelligent, precise and scientific thinkers and those who wear casual clothes are considered more creative. That’s why the words of advice captured in proverbs like “clothes make the man” and “dress for what you want, not what you have” are very relevant.
The most important study on work dress was done by Hajo Adam and Adam Galincsi of Northwestern University. Enclothed Cognition, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, provided new insights into the issue. It established that the clothes you wear not only change the way others see you, but they also change the way you see yourself.
In this research, some participants were asked to wear casual clothes and others to wear business clothes while doing some intellectual tests. In these experiments, researchers found that participants performing a task wearing a white lab coat made only half the errors compared to participants wearing street clothes. Participants in a doctor’s coat saw a greater difference than those wearing a painter’s coat. The lab coat, which symbolizes science and medical doctors, clearly enhanced the efforts of the participants to live up to it. They were much better at concentrating and engaged more in arm movement while wearing white coats.
Another study, The Aesthetics We Wear: How Attire Influences What We Buy, Keisha Cutwright, a marketing professor at Duke Fuqua School of Business, found that what we wear can influence our buying decisions. Shoppers who wore more clothing, such as dresses or blazers, bought about 18% more items than those who shopped in casual outfits, such as T-shirts and flip-flops.
These experiments are part of a larger field of study called ‘absorbed cognition’, where the study of how one’s brain and body interact with the surrounding environment and how these interactions form and contribute to cognition. is done. As noted in their book The Body Is a Mind of Its Own, neuroscientists Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee argue that one’s own end is not where one’s flesh ends, but that of the world, including other things. Fills with and mixes. So when you enter a parking garage with a low ceiling, you can ‘feel’ your car’s ceiling height constraint as if it were your own skull. That is why when you pass under such a barrier, you naturally bow down. It is therefore logical to conclude that the clothing you wear, an external object closest to one’s body, will be an extension of itself and will have an effect on one’s cognition.
In this time of work from home, your attire plays another role – enabling an identity transformation. In earlier times, when one worked at a place away from one’s home, getting up to work from one’s home dress was a daily ritual, a transition from one’s home identity to one’s work identity. allowed infection. Even though there is no dire need to work from home, it makes sense to maintain this daily ritual of changing into formal wear.
Clothes have control over our mind. The clothes we wear are one of those unconscious factors that have always influenced our behavior and will continue to do so. The next time you attend a Zoom meeting, what you wear is above the screen level of the camera, as it affects how others see you. This may seem obvious. But an important lesson is that not only what you wear above the screen, but also what you wear below that level, will affect the most important person in that meeting—you.
Our debate on the need for lawyers to be in black robes in hot Indian conditions may continue. But the verdict on the overall relevance of the dress code is clear. What really matters is the clothes we wear to work.
Biju Dominic is Chief Promoter, Fractal Analytics and President of FinalMile Consulting.
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