Date of Award

Fall 12-15-2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (BS)

Department

Psychology

College

College of Science

First Advisor

Terry Pettijohn

Abstract/Description

This study was conducted to look at the contemporary effects of students' clothing styles on college professors' perceptions about the students' intelligence, attractiveness, and sociability. The effects of three dress conditions, formal attire, provocative attire, and casual attire, were studied on professors on a southeastern university. The hypothesis stated that a student wearing formal attire would receive the highest overall rating and the highest rating in intelligence. The casual attire condition would receive the lowest rating in intelligence and overall rating. The rating of the provocative clothing condition is predicted to change based on the sex of the rater. One of the most important factors in this study is that this research was conducted in university setting, which is something that previous research on this topic lacked. University professors (N=43) answered an online survey where they were exposed to one of the three dress conditions. The attractiveness of the student was controlled by using the same model for all three dress conditions and was photographed in the same pose. Results indicated that the sex of the professors did not have a significant effect on the grade assigned and overall rating of the student. There were significant differences between the conditions of the red dress and no photo in five attributes. The students wearing the red dress received the lowest score in self-confidence, cheerfulness, individualism and overall class grade. Furthermore, the findings of this research extend previous research on the topic of clothing styles and perception by investigating it at the university level.

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