Enclothed Cognition Researchers have known for some time that wearing a particular kind of clothing can affect how people perceive themselves. Recently, however,researchers have discovered that clothing may affect more than just how we feel about ourselves. The clothes people wear may also change their ability to process information and perform tasks, a phenomenon known as enclothed cognition. Certain clothing can have a particular meaning or association, and wearing this clothing may cause people to think and act in a way that reflects this association.
Now listen to part of a lecture in a psychology class
Professor: Okay, so scientists did an experiment that demonstrated how this works. The study used long white lab coats, just like medical doctors wear here in the US.
Now, what traits do we associate with doctors? For one thing, we know they're observant, they need to pay attention to detail, so researchers wanted to see if people who won’t medical doctors would show this behavior while wearing lab coats.
Here is what they did. They got two groups of volunteers. And in one of the groups, each of the volunteers was given a lab coat to wear. And in the other group, each volunteer was just shown a lab coat, it was put on the table in front of them and they were told to look at it. And in each case, of course, the volunteers were told that these were doctors’lab coats.
So, to test their abilities, thevolunteers had to look at two pictures that were almost the same but not quite. Then the participants had to see how many differences they could notice between the two pictures. And here is the interesting thing, the people who were wearing doctor's lab coats noticed more differences than the people who just looked at the lab coats. So, the researchers concluded that by actually wearing the lab coats, people started to act like doctors to be more observant and better noticing small details.
Explain how the example from the professor's lecture illustrates the concept of enclothed cognition.
Enclothed cognition is a phenomenon which means the clothes people wear may change their ability to process information and perform tasks.
For example, scientists sampled two groups of volunteers. In one group, each member was given a long white lab coat to wear just like medical doctors. In other group, each member just got a chance to look at these lab coats, which were put on the table in front of them. And then, two groups of volunteers were required to look at two pictures which were almost the same but not exactly, and they needed to notice the differences between these two pictures. The result of the experiment is that volunteers wearing the long white coat noticed more details than those who just looked at the lab coat, because wearing long white coats made them more observant and act more like doctors.
