Clothing does much more than just keep us warm. The attire that an individual chooses to wear not only serves a useful and socially conventional purpose, it also displays signals about the wearer’s preferences, values and lifestyle habits. Signals sent through clothing can be both intentional and unintentional, and they can often be misleading. Because clothing is an easily accessible reference point from which to base an opinion, wardrobe often forms the basis of some of our most fundamental assumptions.

“We form impressions of people all the time based on whatever information we have available. Some of that is intentional, a lot of it happens outside of us even thinking about it,” Professor Sanjay Srivastava, a psychologist who specializes in the study of social environments, said.

According to Srivastava and Professor Sara Hodges, his colleague in the University of Oregon Psychology Department, attire offers a range of information about one’s place in the world, including cultural background, gender association and socioeconomic background. It can also provide insight into the group identity of the wearer.

“Clothing can indicate affluence or power, so we judge status from clothing, and we also are concerned with whether people are part of our group or another group,” Hodges said.

UO students Ethan Rivas and Rebecca Ruddy agree with the principal that people make assumptions about others based on their wardrobe either consciously or unconsciously. However, they also believe that gender plays a role in how much significance is attributed to clothing.

“I think that girls (pay more attention) than guys because I think that clothes mean a lot more to girls. Whether it’s intentional or not, we make assumptions based on what people wear,” Ruddy said. “For me, I think it’s based on how put together they are.”

Rivas pays less attention to overall physical presentation and more to unique wardrobe embellishments.

“A guy can wear anything, but if he has something that sticks out, like his shoes, he can make a statement like that,” he said.

The psychologists agree that, although we’re all somewhat guilty of making hasty judgments based on appearances, gender may indeed have some influence on how we perceive others based on their clothing.

“It’s probably safe to say that men and women notice different things. We probably notice different things, and we probably notice things about different people,” Srivastava said.