Research
The Poppy Field near Argenteuil, Claude Monet, 1873
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, Gustave Klimt, 1907
Dress and Person Perception
Clothing, hairstyle, and accessories influence first impressions. However, target dress is notably absent from theories and models of person perception. Prior work highlights three reasons why this is the case—theoretical complexity, incompatibility with traditional methodology, and underappreciation by the groups who have historically guided research in person perception. Ongoing work considers the role of dress for adhering to contextual norms and the dimensionality of judgments of articles of clothing (and how these dimensions translate to impressions of individuals).
The Banjo Lesson, Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1893
Intersectionality and Person Perception
Intersectionality theory recognizes that identity-based systems of oppression and privilege interlock to uniquely shape people’s experiences of the world. In person perception, intersectionality is often evoked to describe interactions between identities for impressions and stereotypes. However, as a critical theory, intersectionality theory is perhaps most valuable for examining aspects of research such as generalizability (e.g., does heteronormative research on attraction generalize to LGBTQ+ folks?) and positionality (e.g., are decisions or conclusions in a given area of research biased by researchers’ lenses?).
The Two Fridas (Las dos Fridas), Frida Kahlo, 1939
Dress and Identity
Dress, unlike the face or the body, can be frequently and deliberately chosen by the wearer. This gives dress great potential for contributing to the construction of the self. This potential is magnified by strong cultural associations of styles and garments with central aspects of identity such as gender, sexuality, nationality, and religion. Furthermore, though it may be tempting to write off less central aspects of identity signaled by dress (e.g., hobbies, favorite bands, favorite sports teams, aesthetic preferences), these aspects of identity may nevertheless influence experiences of affiliation as well as feelings of aligning one’s outward appearance with one’s inner self.
The Fitting, Mary Cassatt, 1891
Simulation and Measurement
Simulation work can illuminate both what is possible and what is expected, often accounting for complexities that cannot be cleanly considered via experiments or surveys. Furthermore, a greater focus on measurement practices is necessary to confidently measure the complex latent factors at the heart of psychological questions—people’s beliefs, worldviews, prejudices, and self-concepts. Popular approaches to measuring latent factors and their relation incorporate assumptions that may be quite far from reality, such as the invariance of scales across groups and the equal loading of items onto factors.