Here's a great topic to get an image consultant or clothing store some free publicity.
(Thanks www.askmen.com for this article)
Don't we all feel a little more at ease when we get to deal with a professional and they are dressed for success! I like my banker in a suit and my Dr with a lab coat. And I'm not the only one.
Professional attire really does make you perform better. Wearing a suit and tie probably makes you feel more professional and, as researchers have just discovered, it may actually make you more professional (at least if you associate suits with professionalism). A Kellogg School of Management study split subjects into two groups, with half wearing lab coats and half without them. The subjects then performed a Stroop test, which measures reaction time and accuracy (the test involves rapidly naming the color in which a word is printed, when that word actually spells out the name of a different color). The participants wearing lab coats made half as many errors as the other group. In further tests, subjects wearing an item merely defined as a lab coat or doctor's coat performed better than participants wearing a similar piece of clothing defined as a painter's coat.
Wayne Kelly
