The Coat

In 2012, two researchers ran a study involving focus and fashion. They started with three groups. The first group wore a white lab coat and were told it was a doctor's coat. The second group wore the exact same coat, but were told it was a painter's coat. The third group didn't wear the coat at all. They just looked at it and imagined themselves in it.

The results were fascinating.

The group in the doctor's coat made about half as many mistakes as everyone else. Wearing the coat they believed was a doctor's made them measurably sharper. The second group, in the identical coat with a painter's label, scored no better than they would have in their street clothes. Same coat, one different word, and the boost was simply gone. And the third group, who only pictured themselves in the coat, got no lift at all. The only thing that changed a single score was putting it on.

The scientists called it enclothed cognition, and it runs on two things that have to happen together. The meaning of the clothes, and the physical experience of wearing them. Take away either one and nothing happens.

Put the two together and you have a doorway. You wear the thing that means sharp, and you get sharper, and you never had to force it. The coat carried the meaning into you through your body.

Here's the part they didn't test, and it's the part I care about. In their lab, the meaning was fixed. A doctor's coat means careful to everyone. But your closet isn't a lab, and you are not stuck with the meanings the world assigned. You get to load a piece with whatever meaning you need.

This is the jacket I wear to ask for the money.

This is my power red I wear to stand out.

This is the dress that means I'm allowed to take up space.

You decide what it means, and once it's on your body, it will carry that feeling into you exactly the way the doctor's coat carried carefulness.

Name the feeling, then dress for it. The naming is the meaning. The dressing is the body. The garment does the rest.

PUT ON one piece today and decide what it means. Not what it means to the world, what it means to you. Powerful, free, unhideable, whatever you need. Then wear it out the door, and let it do to you what the doctor's coat did to them

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The study: Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky, "Enclothed Cognition," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2012.