Working out what not to wear

We are what we eat, we are told, but now it seems we also are what we wear. Choose wisely and you will win respect, choose badly and you will be shunned.

What you wear has a powerful influence on how people respond to you, according to an intriguing project prepared by Ciara Lynch, Amy O'Donoghue and Annette Sweetnam, three 16-year-old transition year students from Bandon Grammar School in Co Cork.

"We wanted to see if people made decisions about you based on what you are wearing," Amy said. To find this out they dressed in different styles and assessed how people responded to them while on the street.

They dressed in eight styles - emo, slut, nerd, common, hippy, student, Traveller and business person.

"We went into Cork city wearing typical stereotype clothing asking directions to different places," Ciara said.

They conducted 400 trials with one asking directions and the other two observing responses. They were looking for visual clues such as facial expressions, whether the subjects maintained eye contact, tone of voice, if they seemed friendly or annoyed or just looked blankly at them.

The results were unequivocal. The worst response was while in emo clothing, a style akin to a cross between punk and goth.

"People talked to us very badly and asked why we were dressing that way," Annette said. "The best response was while wearing business clothing, people were really polite and friendly."

They found that people looked down on the nerds, an unexpected finding. The people assessed were indifferent to them when dressed as students, or while wearing common dress and actually quite friendly to them while wearing hippy clothing. The slut and Traveller style also tended to attract a negative view.

They also surveyed 200 people, showing them pictures of people in these eight styles. They asked the subjects to give their first impressions about the pictures, asking them to make quick assessments on things such as level of education, apparent wealth, likely personality, background and whether they seem to be "responsible" people or not.

Again the business dress attracted the most positive response, with assumptions being made about bad backgrounds and low level of wealth for emo and other styles.

"If you wear business clothing you will be treated well," concluded Amy.

"People really will judge you on the basis of your clothing," added Ciara.