The psychology behind fashion
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/01/24/the-problem-with-greg-bovinos-overcoat-isnt-what-you-think-00745516There’s More to Greg Bovino’s Coat Than You Think
Uniforms perform three important roles: They reveal what an institution believes itself to be; they shape how the public sees service members; and they affect how service members see themselves. Psychologists call the third phenomenon “enclothed cognition.” In a widely cited 2012 study, researchers found that participants who wore a white coat they believed belonged to a doctor performed better on attention-related tasks than those who wore the same coat described as something that belonged to a painter. Subsequent studies showed that other types of clothes can shape behavior: suits can make wearers think more abstractly and behave more assertively; medical uniforms can increase the wearer’s empathy; and police uniforms can heighten their threat sensitivity and readiness to use force.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103112000200Enclothed cognition - ScienceDirect
Abstract
We introduce the term “enclothed cognition” to describe the systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer's psychological processes. We offer a potentially unifying framework to integrate past findings and capture the diverse impact that clothes can have on the wearer by proposing that enclothed cognition involves the co-occurrence of two independent factors—the symbolic meaning of the clothes and the physical experience of wearing them. As a first test of our enclothed cognition perspective, the current research explored the effects of wearing a lab coat. A pretest found that a lab coat is generally associated with attentiveness and carefulness. We therefore predicted that wearing a lab coat would increase performance on attention-related tasks. In Experiment 1, physically wearing a lab coat increased selective attention compared to not wearing a lab coat. In Experiments 2 and 3, wearing a lab coat described as a doctor's coat increased sustained attention compared to wearing a lab coat described as a painter's coat, and compared to simply seeing or even identifying with a lab coat described as a doctor's coat. Thus, the current research suggests a basic principle of enclothed cognition—it depends on both the symbolic meaning and the physical experience of wearing the clothes.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5292616/Students Wearing Police Uniforms Exhibit Biased Attention toward Individuals Wearing Hoodies - PMC