Anger Angerosa's Clothing: Case Study

Angerosa investigates whether different clothing styles play a role in impacting how one is perceived by others. The three clothing styles that were being compared to in the experiment were the professional style of dressing that was represented by blazer and skirt, casual as jeans and trendy as a cropped shirt and shorts. Through the methods she employed to conduct the experiment, the results gathered showed that those who were dressed in the professional style were perceived as more confident, successful and intelligent as compared to those dressed in the trendy or casual style. Angerosa concludes that one’s dressing does affect how other’s perceive them, whereby those dressed in a professional style were perceived to possess more positive

They pointed out that more socially desirable traits such as likeability, honesty and competence were attributed to the attractive individuals whereas the less attractive individuals were deemed as lazy and unproductive. They also suggested that employers are more likely to hire the more attractive individuals as they believe that they can be effective marketing tools as attractiveness affects a customer’s perception of the company’s product. One example provided was that companies such as Abercrombie and Fitch is taking an aggressive approach to develop an attractive sales force and are openly seeking workers who are physically more attractive. (pg 85) This article is different from the rest as it provides different perspectives from various stakeholders in the workplace, from the employers to the clients and customers of a particular business or industry and finally to the general populace in society. From the employees point of view, the appearance factor can supersede more pertinent criteria such as employer’s skills, qualifications and knowledge. This is evident by the statistic that “plain people earn between five to ten percent less than average looking people, who earned five percent less than good looking people.”(pg 110) On the other hand, from the employees point of view, beauty has a direct effect on profitability. (pg 110)

The author points out that people tend to have higher expectations, cooperate better and trust more attractive individuals than the less attractive ones. It was also pointed out that one’s attractiveness affects their chances of being hired for the job. This is due to social desirability which is the level of how approachable one individual is and social utility which refers to their success or failure rate in the workplace. She argued that while the Halo effect had a significant role in this biasedness in the workplace where physically attractive individuals are perceived to possess socially desirable traits that are beneficial in the workplace, it is not the only factor present in hiring decisions. Employees who displayed similarities in race, attitude and personality with the employers stood higher chances of being employed for the job. Also, this article is different from the rest as it sheds light on an alternative view of how the Big 5 Personality traits plays a part in hiring processes. However, one limitation of the study was the experimental method where participants were asked to rate the personalities of other people just by looking at photos of them. This lack of face to face communication could affect the accuracy of these ratings as it is unfair to rate one’s personality without any physical