Your Ugly Clothing Also Makes Your Face Ugly

Your Ugly Clothing Also Makes Your Face Ugly
Jenny Galvao

According to research carried out by Mare Lõhmus of Uppsala University and associates, clothing worn by women affects men’s ratings of their attractiveness. We all know that our clothing is a great way to shape our attractiveness, so these results aren’t surprising until your realize that the men offering the women’s attractiveness ratings could not actually see the clothing worn by the women.

In this experiment, female participants were photographed in three conditions including wearing an outfit that made them feel attractive, one in which they felt unattractive, and one that made them feel comfortable. The women selected the clothing themselves and were asked to think about the clothing, and then pose for a photograph with a neutral facial expression. Female participants then filled out a survey rating their comfort and self-confidence.

The results showed that when wearing the clothing the women felt attractive in, men found their faces to be the most attractive and rated them as such. In line with this, women who were wearing the clothing they felt unattractive in were given lower facial scores of attractiveness. In the comfortable clothing scenario, the women were given a rating of medium rating which fell between most and least attractive.

Even though women were told to pose with a neutral facial expression, they simply couldn’t stifle the negative or positive emotions they felt and this leaked emotion was visible to male onlookers.

The study shows that men don’t even need to see women’s outfits to get a sense for how woman are feeling about their outfit selection. So women, you can’t hide your feelings of unattractiveness even if you work hard at painting a neutral facial expression across your face. Men pick up on your feelings and emotions simply based on your facial expression, even when your expression is “neutral.” Somehow attractiveness is leaked onto your otherwise neutral expression for all the world to see.

The study also shows how elective clothing nonverbals are entwined with attractiveness and have the potential to show up across our entire being. One might see how feeling attractive leads to positive body expressions and even greater happiness. Not to mention, because we look good, we feel good, and this helps us extract positive treatment from others. While this study only looked at facial expressions isolated in time in a photograph, one might imagine what kind of effects this might have in a real time fluid environment encompassing the entire body. In this case, how you feel about what you’re wearing likely hits people pretty hard. For this reason the old cliché rings true, ladies, always remember to “dress for success.”

Image Credit: David Shankbone

About the Author: Jenny Galvao is an undergraduate student at the University of Guelph studying psychology.

 

 

 

Resources

Lõhmus, Mare, L.; Fredrik Sundström and Mats Björklund. Dress for Success: Human Facial Expressions are Important Signals of Emotions. Annales Zoologici Fennici. 2019. 46: 75-80.