Influence of Style of Dress on Formation of First Impressions

Abstract

Within a university, students of various colleges dress differently. Our purpose was to verify the influence of style of dress on formation of first impressions. Subjects were 30 women of three colleges from a university in Sao Paulo. Subjects rated on a 7-point scale three photographs (without faces) of male students from each one of the three colleges. The first model dressed in a socially formal way, the second one in a socially informal way, and the third one sportively. The three models were rated comparably on intelligence and culture. The model who dressed in a socially formal way was considered less handsome, extroverted, sympathetic, charming, and attractive than the other two models. Subjects tended also to attribute to the first a rightist ideology. No interactions were found between subjects' and models' colleges.