engleski

Personality and dressing style: cues and stereotypes

Research have shown that a relatively accurate judgement of some personality traits can be achieved even when judgements are based on very small amount of information, such as short videos or photographs. It has also been found that some cues leading to accurate judgment were related to characteristics of physical appearance such as dressing style. The aims of the present study were to examine to what extent personality is manifested in a dressing style, to what degree accurate personality judgment based solely on this type of information can be achieved, and what aspects of target persons’ dressing style observers use in their judgments. Personality traits examined included the Big Five traits, affective traits, and narcissism. Group of 10 judges rated personalities of 74 target persons based on photographs of them in their favorite clothes, and the accuracy of those judgments was examined. Independent group of coders rated the level of presence of different dressing style cues, and the relationship of those cues with target persons’ self-ratings and with judges’ ratings was also examined. The achieved level of accuracy was quite low, but there were some valid cues to personality even in this type of context. Valid cues were not used by the judges, who used larger numbers of other cues instead. The results obtained indicate that, when they have small amount of information at their disposal, observers’ judgments rely on stereotypes that have been found mostly inaccurate.

first impressions, dressing style, personality perception, stereotypes

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