Mark Zuckerberg, who starts the social network Facebook, often wears jeans and a T-shirt to work, including to important business meetings. Not everyone agrees with him. Some people say he doesn't look serious this way.
Harvard Business School researcher, Francesca Gino, has a different idea. While most people seem to think that dressing differently from those around you generally has a bad influence, she believes it can actually have a positive (积极的) effect. And she's done experiments to support her idea. When her researchers, wearing sportswear, visited the expensive shops in Italy, they were usually viewed as wealthier and more important people than those who were well-dressed in designer clothes.
Do people always view less formal (正式的) clothing more positively? Researchers in France took their research out into the street, to the general public. The video they made shows an actor dressed in a well-cut suit and shiny shoes. While walking along the road, he begins to cough badly, stops to catch his breath and falls down. Before he even calls for help, people rush to help him. In another video, the actor appears at the same crowded place and repeats the actions in exactly the same way. But this time, no one comes to help. What's the difference? He's wearing untidy clothes and looks like a homeless person. In a situation like this, the clothes you're wearing could mean the difference between life and death.
It seems that our clothing doesn't only change the way others view us, but also the way we see ourselves. In an experiment testing students' ability to pay attention to details (细节), the group wearing white lab coats did the best. Why? Researchers told them that they were wearing the doctors' coats. The experiment didn't show whether such influences would last long. More experiments are needed in the future before we decide to make the doctors' coats a must of fashion.
