COOL SHOES AND NON-CONFORMITYby David IsleRalph Waldo Emerson wrote that “whoso would be a man

COOL SHOES AND NON-CONFORMITYby David IsleRalph Waldo Emerson wrote that “whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.” (Here the word “man” is used in the archaic sense of a person who is powerful and self-reliant.) Silvia Bellezza and co-authors from Harvard Business School have published a paper on what they call “The Red Sneakers Effect”, which suggests that the implication works in the other direction as well: non-conformists are perceived to be more independent, successful, and of higher social status.The study’s methods are a bit heavy-handed for my skeptical tastes (they mostly boil down to simply asking respondents how they view light non-conformity), but the logic is this: think about someone who goes to a job interview wearing a hoodie, as Mark Zuckerberg did when meeting with potential Facebook investors two years ago. There are (at least) two possible inferences you could make about this person. The first is that they are so clueless or impecunious that they either couldn’t afford a suit or didn’t know they should wear one. The second is that they have so much leverage in whatever negotiation is taking place that they don’t need to bother with any nod to convention. If the first is an unlikely enough scenario, then the impact of the hoodie is to lift the perceived status of its wearer.In a series of experiments, Bellezza et al. demonstrate some of the ingredients for this impressive cocktail. First, there must be a prevailing convention, and the audience must be aware of it. Clerks in fashionable shops judged (“non-conforming”) shoppers in gym wear to be of higher status than shoppers in a dress and fur coat, whereas your typical woman on the street, unaware of boutique conventions, chose the fur-coated shoppers. Second, intention matters: subjects judged a man wearing a red bow-tie to his black-tie dinner to be more competent, but not if they were told that it was “not [the man’s] intention to dress in a way that potentially deviates from the dress code.” (Like I said, it’s pretty heavy-handed.) Lastly, if you’re going to preach, do it to the choir: non-conformity works best on audience members who themselves have a strong desire for individualism.I question the broader applicability of these results. Leaving aside methodological issues and taking the survey responses at face value, there’s clearly a limit to non-conformity. Showing up in a hoodie Zuck-style might be a power move, but if you show up wearing nothing at all, you will generate a whole different set of impressions. And, as this thought experiment might lead you to consider, the impact of non-conformity may depend on personal qualities of the non-conformist. Recall the two groups of non-conformists mentioned earlier. If you come to your meeting unprepared, others may be quick to throw you out of the “arrogant genius” category into the “lazy idiot” category. If you had worn a suit, at least they might stop at “idiot.” And if you are prepared, you can just be a “genius” without the “arrogant” handicap.Finally, there is a third category of putative non-conformers, which #menswear lovers should know all too well: those who non-conform not because they don’t really care and know they can get away with it, but in order to mimic someone who knows they can get away with it. This is the category for people who take close-up selfies of their artfully degage’ unbuttoned collar and pray for reblogs. In this case, the non-conformist has become the conformist. But I assume these people only agree to job interviews for the opportunity to wear a tie anyway.  Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This article first appeared on the No Man blog in August 2014. -- source link

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