We have a specific dress code...

[MadMike]

Anecdotal evidence doesn't disprove science.

So 25 years of personal experience means nothing?

[s_stabeler]

yes and no- however, both sides are misapplying the science. What the study says is that MOST people, when thye dress professionally, act profesisonally. However, that does NOT mean any particular individual will see the same effect.

Oh, and the study is flawed in a different respect: there's no effort, AFAIK, t control for the possibility that acting professional makes people want to dress more professionally. ( not to mention the fact that professional behaviour from a construction worker is different from professional behaviour from someone working in an office)

on the other hand, the personal experiences don't disprove the science because the science isn't saying that it happens in EVERY case.

[Andara Bledin]

So 25 years of personal experience means nothing?

As relates to general trends? If you're legitimately not affected by your mode of dress, that makes you an outlier, and policy is decided based on general trends, not outliers.

So, your 25 years of personal experience is irrelevant to the matter of whether or not dress codes have the desired effect.

Especially since your comfort factor still does nothing to alter the fact that other people change how they treat you based on how they perceive you, and that's based, in part, on how you dress.

[MadMike]

Especially since your comfort factor still does nothing to alter the fact that other people change how they treat you based on how they perceive you, and that's based, in part, on how you dress.

I tend to not trust people in suits and ties, because a lot of them are politicians, and most people here know how I feel about politicians.

Our old manager dressed up in a suit and tie everyday, and most people perceived him as a tyrannical asshole. Then again, he was a tyrannical asshole. He was always ranting about being "professional", while he was constantly bullying his employees, to the point that several good people who had been there for years resigned, threatening people's jobs without cause, lying to his employees, etc. If that's being "professional", then I'm proud to be "unprofessional."

Thankfully, someone higher up in the company eventually got wind of what was going on, and fired him. Once he was gone, some of the people who had quit came back.

[Hyena Dandy]

So 25 years of personal experience means nothing?

When it comes to scientific data? Yeah.

Especially because the changes are slight and may not necessarily be perceived. I'd say I bike with equal attention to safety if I'm wearing a helmet or not, science says my perception of safety slows my reaction time slightly. I'd say I'm equally charitable, but priming me to think of money makes me less likely to donate. Giving me ten ones makes me more likely to spend them than giving one ten. Dressing me like a stereotype gangsta won't make me not a pacifist, and dressing an asshole in a saffron robe won't make him a monk. We're talking about psychological priming, not mind control.

[MadMike]

I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree then. I don't see how forcing someone to wear uncomfortable clothing improves the quality of their work. I know I work a lot better when I'm comfortable. But then I've always hated dressing up. We tried to do the "formal dining" thing one day on our first cruise, and I hated it. I had barely taken two steps out of the dining room and I already had both the tie and jacket off.

They actually relaxed the dress code at my job slightly. We get to wear jeans on Fridays, and Tuesdays I get to work from home, so it doesn't matter what I wear then. Any other time, it's something they call "business casual", although that strikes me as an oxymoron, right up there with "honest politician" and "good morning."

[Tama]

When I think business casual I think spongebob. Because that's what Plankton calls the outfit when he switches bodies with Mr. krabs...corporate casual.

So I assume it's slacks and a button up shirt."

[HYHYBT]

Well, now, which is it: dressing up improves the quality of your work, or dressing up encourages acting more professionally? They're not the same thing, after all.

If it's the latter, "more professionally" is awfully subjective for science, and both the type and level of professionalism that's relevant varies widely depending on the job. Alternately, if it's the former, dressing up certainly isn't going to improve performance at all jobs, and would greatly hinder many. House painting, for example. Others, it shouldn't matter. At least, though I rarely get paid for these things, when my mind is involved in what I'm doing, and when I'm not being interrupted, my world tends to shrink to the contents of my head and whatever I'm looking at, often the computer screen or the shower wall. Unless my clothes itch, restrict movement, trap too much or too little heat, something like that, I tend to forget what I'm wearing entirely. I really did once, when called in to straighten out I-forget-what, go to work at McDonald's in my Customers Suck! shirt, and didn't even realize it until I'd been there a while. (And if the clothes *are* itchy or whatever, then they're distracting me from work rather than helping me do it better.)

[telecom_goddess]

I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree then. I don't see how forcing someone to wear uncomfortable clothing improves the quality of their work. I know I work a lot better when I'm comfortable.

Here here! I hate dressing up and work much better when I'm comfortable. They changed our dress policy a while back from business casual with casual Friday to casual every day which is much easier. Now I can wear comfortable athletic shoes and NOT get a raft of shit for it anymore. I can wear a t shirt in peace. And comfortable pants. I don't care for jeans I just like soft comfy pants. I don't bother with makeup or a fancy hair ...I'm not there to impress people I'm there to type away on my computer and that's it.

[Ginger Tea]

Plus, in addition to behavior being modified by how one is dressed, how people react is also modified, meaning life is easier if you dress well.

Wearing a doctor's coat gives people a cognitive boost

I originally read that* along the lines as people were willing to listen to a doctor more in a lab coat than 'civvies'.
Which is also true, but also a scary scenario where you get some High schooler going all Doogie Howser unchallenged for a month (no link it was on WTFIWWY a few weeks back) and his name tag also listed anaesthesiologist as his profession.

*It was probably late at night after my reading comprehension had gone to bed.

I will also echo that a builder in a suit is just stupid, it comes under the umbrella of 'dressing professionally' but its counter productive in this case, who would take a builder seriously if they showed up in a suit and tie and began roofing? Architects with a high vis and hard hat, yeah, guy throwing into a cement mixer, no.

A decade ago I briefly worked in a nightclub that had a poor reputation prior to rebranding/new owners and they upped the dress code to almost suit and tie, it was still overkill dress code but it didn't stop one guy standing in the middle of the 'VIP' floor in his Top Man jacket and slacks hock a long loogie on to the hardwood floor.

A tramp in Armani is still a tramp.

[Hyena Dandy]

A tramp in Armani is still a tramp.

As I said. >_>

We're talking about psychological priming, not mine control. A person dressed in one way or another is PSYCHOLOGICALLY PRIMED to behave more formally or informally, more aggressively or passively, more patiently or less patiently. They aren't under a magical influence that changes their inherent traits.

[s_stabeler]

there's actually another point I made: is it that dressing more professionally makes you act more professionally, or is it that someone who has the mentality to act professionally is more likely to dress professionally? ( I am referring to situations where a suit and tie actually makes sense for the job)

in other words, which causes the other?
not to mention, is it perception? ( in other words, if you visit a client in a suit and tie, do they tend to think you are more professional than if you visited in a t-shirt?) It's important, since it matters in terms of what jobs make sense to have a dress code in. If it actually makes you act more professional, then it makes sense even if no customer would see you. ( a call centre, say) If it's perception, then in jobs where you don't see the people you're doing work for, a dress code makes no sense.

[Hyena Dandy]

You know we don't have the entire thing, but you can still see the highlights of the study listed, which would answer some of your questions.

► Three experiments demonstrate that wearing a lab coat increases attention. ► Attention did not increase when the coat was not worn or associated with a painter. ► Attention only increased when the coat was a) worn and b) associated with a doctor. ► The influence of clothes thus depends on wearing them and their symbolic meaning.

[s_stabeler]

frankly, to me that study suggests that the doctors in question don't feel like proper doctors unless they are wearing a lab coat. I'm presuming therefore, that it's a) probably only an effect that occurs in a few fields, maybe even only in that one field b) not the clothes causing the effect. It's more likely to be some form of Impostor Syndrome in the ones that don't think they are wearing lab coats.

which also means that the study is more or less irrelevant to the discussion, since pretty much everyone agrees that a dress code, when appropriate to the job, isn't a problem. It's when they are either a) unrealistically strict (for example, if someone working in the stockroom of a store was expected to wear a suit and tie, there's a fair chance that they'll be spending an unreasonable amount of money on replacement clothes) or b) constantly changing, so that you end up paying for new clothes for work fairly often. ( dress codes aren't always casual/smart casual/formal- it';s not inconceivable that a particularly petty manager would specify colour. Also bullshit is cases like Rageaholic says, when an all but invisible hole is the basis for a requirement to replace the shirt. ( especially if the hole is due to something you are required to wear)

[Andara Bledin]

there's actually another point I made: is it that dressing more professionally makes you act more professionally, or is it that someone who has the mentality to act professionally is more likely to dress professionally?

The studies were specifically for the former. People who were part of the study were asked to put on a coat they were told was a doctor's coat, while others were told to put on the same exact coat, but were told it was a painter's coat. Those wearing what they thought was a doctor's coat had better concentration on mental tasks then those who thought they were wearing a painter's coat.

frankly, to me that study suggests that the doctors in question don't feel like proper doctors unless they are wearing a lab coat. I'm presuming therefore, that it's a) probably only an effect that occurs in a few fields, maybe even only in that one field b) not the clothes causing the effect.

One, it wasn't doctors, it was people told that the generic coat was either that for a doctor or that for a painter. It was the association formed by them with the coat that primed them to act more like what they assumed that a doctor or painter would act like.

I'd imagine that the same test with an objective towards creativity would result in the ones wearing painter's coats being primed to work better than those wearing doctor's coats.

Considering that the code in question in the OP is about how the employees appear to the public they serve, being in a service industry and all, the dress code isn't inappropriate.

And if the manager is being petty with the dress code, then blame the manager for being petty, not the dress code they're using as a tool.