Considering I’m a business student, it’s essential that I have a business look in my closet for any upcoming events or fairs. It’s a norm nowadays to assume that the better you’re dressed, the more professional and approachable you look to people above you in the career field.We teach society not to judge a book by its cover but the first thing we judge is people’s appearance. Is there a correlation between appearance and performance?

In one article written by Robert Gluck, he describes his thought on this issue of dressing for success. Gluck is a surgeon in Long Island, NY. He says that the importance of a practice or firm should be it’s quality. The furniture, pictures on the wall, how one speaks, and your empathy level is what should matter. Instead society judges appearance and how we dress. “At the end of the day you want to engender a relationship built on trust. If as a surgeon, I dress sloppy and keep myself looking like a mess, this will negatively influence the perception of me by a certain segment of my patient population” (Gluck). Wanting to or not Gluck must put into perspective that his attire effects his patients and their trust. Gluck claims that how you dress effects other people more and how they perceive you which leads to greater performance in the business field. Gluck said that his colleague always told him the following expression: “Dress sharp, cut sharp, think sharp.”

Another article discusses a study that was taken at the Kellogg School of Management in Northwestern University by professors. This study tested various people and how much better they did while wearing a lab coat. The test was called the Stroop Tests “which asks participants to say the color of a word being shown on a flash card, rather than the word itself.” Those wearing the lab coat were seen to have done substantially better presuming that they were more cautious and caring to their surroundings. In another study, they gave people lab coats and told them that the coats were artist coats. Therefore many of those people did average. Consequently, scientists related that the jacket itself is what symbolized true meaning and psychologically made them do better.

Through all of this, I found another article that complemented these studies from the WashingtonPost and the article that Glunk wrote. This site tells readers what colors are best to wear during a presentation and what colors to avoid.

RED: “Red universally means stop, excitement, or danger, and one study suggests it might actually scare people a little.” Red is also seen to scare or worry people (related to blood). Therefore steer away from red or any colors around it.

BLUE: “Blue is typically associated with calming effects, and the same idea can be applied to clothing.” Blue shows presenters a stable, creative mind. Therefore blue is a good color to confine to.

DARKER TONES: “Darker colors like black, navy, gray or brown supposedly give off an authoritative message.” Darker colors demonstrate stability in what you are doing and kind of gives off an older look.

LIGHTER TONES: “Lighter colors like earth tones, pastels, or yellows typically appear less intimidating.” This means that people who wear lighter tones are perceived as friendly, kind, and gentle. These colors also help you blend in with other people typically used by shy people.

By these couple of hints, it has been tested and proven that dressing professionally gives out more of an image and says more about yourself then you may think. It is important that we dress to impress but also try and identify yourself and make yourself unique through your attire. Society sets up these norms and these norms can be studied to define you and your career level.