Eye Glasses Body Language – Brief Summary
Christopher Philip
Do eye glasses evoke feelings of scholarliness?
Joan Keiierman and James D. Laird, Clark University conducted a study way back in 1982 looking at the effects of eye glasses on performance and personal impressions.
Undergraduate students, 49 in total, were recruited for the study. They were told that the experiment was meant to study the effects of newly produced plastics in eye lenses on performance.
First they had subjects complete an intellectual task either wearing or not wearing eye glasses. Next, they asked subjects a variety of questions such as “How do you feel right now?”, “How well do you think you did on the tasks?”, “How good are you, usually, at these types of tasks?”, “How certain were you of your answers?” and “Were the tasks hard?”
The subjects responded on a 25-point scale.
As expected, the eye glasses did not have an effect on the actual performance on the task. The subjects that wore glasses however, viewed their performance to be more favourable. The subjects who wore glasses also reported that they “usually performed well” on such tasks. The subjects who did not wear the glasses reported no such confidence. Men received a higher and unexpected boost over the women. They felt the task was easier when wearing glasses than the women. Women on the other hand, felt the task was more difficult when wearing glasses.
The subjects also reported highest on feelings of stability, competence, scholarliness, and humorousness.
As we know, how we feel about objects affects how we embody them. If a social stigma surrounds eye glasses, such that they are attributed to negative, rather than positive traits, the embodiment can be reversed.
So does this old study still hold up? Do people still hold the old stereotype that glasses make people more intelligent and scholarly?
Resources
Keiierman, Joan M. and James D. Laird. The Effect of Appearance on Self Perception. Journal of Personality. 1982; 50: 3.
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