Summary: A new Princeton University study finds that people are judged as more competent when their clothing appears to be higher in economic status. These impressions form almost instantly and are difficult to override.
Source: Princeton University
Overview: Subtle economic cues in clothing shape how competent we perceive others to be, according to research published in Nature Human Behaviour by Princeton scholars. Observers make these judgments in milliseconds, and repeated experiments show the effect is persistent even when people are told to ignore clothing or given incentives to do so.
Across nine experiments, participants rated the competence of faces shown in headshots wearing different upper-body garments. When the same face wore clothing judged by independent raters to look “richer,” observers consistently rated that person as more competent than when the identical face wore clothing judged to look “poorer.” The effect held for casual and formal attire, and persisted even when faces were visible for only a fraction of a second.
The findings link visual impressions of economic status to perceived competence, suggesting that people from lower-income backgrounds may face implicit barriers based solely on what they wear. These immediate judgments can influence important real-world outcomes, from hiring and promotions to social respect and electoral success.
“Poverty is a place rife with challenges. Instead of respect for the struggle, people living in poverty face a persistent disregard and disrespect by the rest of society,” said co-author Eldar Shafir, Class of 1987 Professor in Behavioral Science and Public Policy at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School. “We found that such disrespect — clearly unfounded, since in these studies the identical face was seen as less competent when it appeared with poorer clothing — can have its beginnings in the first tenth of a second of an encounter.”
Lead author DongWon Oh, who conducted the research while a Ph.D. student at Princeton and is now a postdoctoral fellow at New York University, noted that prior work has shown people are sensitive to cues of wealth and poverty in appearance. “Our research shows these cues affect judgments about meaningful traits like competence and are hard, if not impossible, to ignore,” Oh said.
The research team began with 50 facial images, each paired with upper-body clothing that an independent group of judges rated on a scale from “richer” to “poorer.” From those initial ratings, the researchers selected 36 face-clothing pairs—balanced across Black and White faces—that showed the clearest rich-poor contrast. A different set of judges described the garments to ensure the visual differences were subtle; descriptions containing explicitly evaluative words like “rich” or “poor” were exceedingly rare.
In the main studies, participants viewed half of the faces wearing clothing rated as “richer” and the other half wearing clothing rated as “poorer.” They were instructed to rely on their gut impressions and rate each face’s competence on a 1-to-9 scale. Images were displayed for varying durations—from roughly one second down to about 129 milliseconds—and competence ratings were remarkably stable across these exposure times.
To test the robustness of the effect, the researchers varied the design across experiments. They replaced formal clothing with casual tops, informed participants that clothing was unrelated to competence, provided objective information about targets’ professions and incomes, and explicitly instructed observers to ignore clothing. In one experiment, participants were offered monetary rewards for aligning their ratings with a control group that viewed faces without clothing. In a final test, researchers presented pairs of faces and asked participants to choose which person seemed more competent.
Despite these manipulations, the pattern remained the same: faces paired with clothing perceived as wealthier were judged more competent than the identical faces paired with poorer-looking clothing. Warnings, incentives, additional information, and brief exposures did not eliminate the bias.
“To overcome a bias, one needs to not only be aware of it, but to have the time, attentional resources, and motivation to counteract the bias,” the researchers wrote.
The authors conclude that awareness alone is insufficient to remove this rapid, visually driven bias. They suggest practical steps that institutions might take to reduce the influence of clothing-based impressions. For example, employers and academic committees could rely more heavily on paper-based evaluations or blind review processes to avoid snap judgments that favor higher-status appearance. The researchers also point to longstanding examples such as blind grading and the use of school uniforms as measures that can help minimize disadvantage stemming from appearance.
Funding: This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (Award No. 1426642) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Grant No. 6-16). The funders did not influence study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or manuscript preparation.
Source:
Princeton University
Media Contacts:
B. Rose Kelly – Princeton University
Image Source:
Image credit: Egan Jimenez, Princeton University; Chicago Face Database.
Original Research: Closed access — “Economic status cues from clothes affect perceived competence from faces.” DongWon Oh, Eldar Shafir & Alexander Todorov. Nature Human Behaviour. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-019-0782-4.
Abstract
Economic status cues from clothes affect perceived competence from faces
Impressions of competence from faces predict important real-world outcomes, including electoral success and executive selection. Presumed competence correlates with social status. In nine studies, people rated faces in frontal headshots wearing upper-body clothing that independent judges had rated as looking “richer” or “poorer.” The same face paired with “richer” clothes was judged significantly more competent than when paired with “poorer” clothes. The effect persisted under brief exposure (129 ms), despite warnings that clothing cues were non-informative, and even when perceivers were instructed to ignore clothing and given substantial incentives. These findings demonstrate a robust, automatic influence of economic status cues on person perception and highlight an additional obstacle faced by lower-status individuals.