I’m a Neurosurgeon and Did You Know Dressing “Smart” Makes You Smarter?

Mark R. McLaughlin, MD, FACS, FAANS

Does the clothing we wear affect our performance, no matter the task? Over the years I’ve found that I act and think more carefully when I am wearing clothing that on some level represents intelligence to me.? During the pandemic I grew even more curious about the topic as so many of us have been living with understandably loosened (in all ways) dress codes. Do we act and process things differently when we’re in sweats all day ?- - or only presentably dressed above the waist? It turns out we do, and there’s science to back it up!

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When I was in medical school at Virginia Commonwealth University, I wore a button-down shirt and tie, occasionally earning a sneer from some fellow students who dressed in sweats. But I wore a tie because my high school wrestling coach taught me to dress up on game days.?

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Back then Coach Auringer made jackets and ties mandatory every time we had a match. When I asked him why, he said, “Because it’s an important day and dressing up will tell your body that.”?In retrospect the dress code did more than prime me for an all-out effort on the mat. It also affected my attitude in the classroom on those days, making me pay more attention, behave more responsibly and perhaps even improve my academic performance.?

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Of course, it has long been known that one’s attire affects the impressions we make on others. In a study [Howlett] published in the Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, participants rated a faceless man in a finely tailored suit to be higher in confidence, success, salary, and flexibility compared to a man wearing an off-the-rack suit .

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But what interests me more is how attire affects the wearer themselves, as it did me in the classroom some four decades ago! The symbolic power of clothes on a personal level not only enhances confidence but also improves performance in certain settings, just as wearing a tie on match days and in med school did for me.

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And the science supports this. Wearing clothes that differ from everyday attire AND that have personal meaning—whether you think they are lucky, flatter you, or are associated with positive experiences—can make us, in effect, perform better!?

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Findings on this topic published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology [Adam, ?Galinsky] demonstrate the symbolic power of the familiar white lab coat worn by medical professionals on certain attention-based tasks. Researchers even coined the term “enclothed cognition” to connote “the systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer’s psychological processes.”

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Researchers started with participants having a strong association between the coat and attentiveness, carefulness, responsibility and scientific focus.? They then performed three experiments focused on two types of attention: selective (the ability to focus on relevant stimuli and ignore irrelevant ones) and sustained (the ability to maintain focus on a continuing activity).

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On a task requiring subjects to focus on one stimuli and ignore others, measuring “selective attention,” subjects wearing a white lab coat made about half as many errors compared with those not wearing the white lab coat.

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Next, on a “Where’s Waldo”-type of visual attention test, measuring “sustained attention,” the second experiment was designed to determine the effect of the meaning participants assigned to the lab coat they wore and the mere presence of the lab coat as a symbol. Of these participants, some wore a white coat that had been described as a medical doctor’s coat. Others wore the same coat but were told it was an artist’s smock. In another group, the coat was described as a medical doctor’s coat and was displayed on a nearby table, but not worn. Sustained attention was measured using the visual attention test described above. Those who wore the “medical” coat found significantly more “Waldos” than both those in the painter’s smock group and those who did not wear the coat.

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The final experiment sought to determine more definitively the impact of the lab coat as a symbol. Nearly 100 participants were divided into three groups: 1) doctor’s coat wearers; 2) painter’s smock wearers; and 3) non-wearers but with noticeable doctor’s coat on nearby counter. Sustained attention was measured by the same test as in the second experiment.

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Those that wore the doctor’s coat experienced what we now call the “Doctor’s Coat Effect”, whereby participants perform more accurately when the white jacket they wear is described as something a doctor would wear, as opposed to something a painter would wear.. It turns out that even the symbolism of a doctor’s coat outperformed actual wearing of the painter’s smock; that is the group that didn’t wear any coat (but saw one in proximity that was described as a medical coat) did better on the test than those who wore an identical one identified as a painter’s smock. ?In other words even the symbolism of a medical coat made people more attentive and perform more efficiently.

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Moreover, according to findings in five studies [Stepian] reported in Social Psychological and Personality Sciences, wearing formal attire may enhance abstract cognitive processing—a level of thinking associated with higher intelligence that facilitates our ability to see things beyond the concrete details and recognize relationships between different types of information.

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Other kinds of clothes can also impact how we think and feel. As the researchers who conducted the lab coat studies note, sports teams that wear black uniforms tend to be more aggressive than those wearing lighter colors. Who can argue with the success of the perennially dominant Australian All Blacks Rugby team? The authors of the study pondered how far this clothing impact may go. Does wearing a priest’s clothing make a person more ethical? ?Will a firefighter’s or police officer’s uniform make the wearer act braver? My guess is probably!

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Looking back on medical school and wrestling match-days, my tie carried symbolic meaning that established a link with my self-perception that made me a more serious student in the classroom—and perhaps even more likely to pin my next opponent.? What I learned from this valuable experience and the studies described above is: it’s not just what you wear, it’s how you THINK about what you’re wearing that impacts performance.

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Take home point: you may want to think twice before you choose your outfit for the day. It speaks to others, but more importantly it speaks to you.

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Mark McLaughlin, MD , practices neurological surgery at Princeton Brain and Spine Care and believes that we can all use the core principles behind brain surgery and apply them to our daily lives. His mission is to use the lessons he has learned from his career to help others manage stressful situations and engage with problem-solving.

Sources?

Adam, H., and Adam Galinsky. "Enclothed cognition."?J Exp Soc Psychol. 2012;117: ?

Howlett N, Pine K, Orak??o?lu I, Fletcher B. The influence of clothing on first impressions. J Fash Mark Manag. 2013;17:38?48.

Stepian ML, Ferber SN, Gold JM, Rutchick AM. The cognitive consequences of formal clothing. Soc Psychol Personal Sci. 2015;6:661?668.

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