Enclothed Cognition: How Your Clothes Influence Your Psychology

According to the authors’ definition, enclothed cognition describes the systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer's psychological processes. The term “Enclothed cognition” was coined by  Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky who exhibited the phenomenon with an experiment in 2012 using white lab coats. More specifically, the study concluded that the principle of enclothed cognition happens when two independent variables are present: physically wearing clothing and its symbolic meaning. In their experiments, they used lab coat wearing.

The first experiment revealed that participants with a lab coat exhibited higher selective attention than people wearing their own clothes. The second and third experiments showed strong evidence that enclothed cognition significantly relies not just on wearing but also on the symbolic meaning of a piece of clothing. Experiments showed that there was an increase in sustained attention only when participants were told they were wearing a doctor’s coat.