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Princeton: Stylish men are perceived as 'significantly more competent'
As much as we say it's not about the clothes, it's still about the clothes.

David Beckham attends the GQ Men Of The Year Awards 2019 at Tate Modern on September 03, 2019 in London, England.
- A new study from Princeton University shows that perception of competence is linked to dress.
- Researchers discovered the same results over nine separate studies: men that dress better are viewed as more competent.
- Even when told clothing is not a measure of competence, judges ruled in favor of the better-dressed men.
It would be nice to believe that we judge others not based on how they dress, but on their personal character. While such an idea sounds commendable, it's not true, says a new study out of Princeton University.
Regardless of how much we like to think ourselves above judging based on the clothing others wrap themselves in, such decisions are made much quicker than conscious awareness allows—as little as 130 milliseconds. The paper, which includes research from nine separate studies, confirms the long-held sentiment that "the clothes make the man."
Numerous studies have investigated how we judge faces. Speculation about the role of facial symmetry, large eyes, and prominent cheekbones has been around for decades. For this study — it was published in Nature Human Behavior on Dec. 9 — the researchers flashed the photos of 50 men so quickly that facial recognition proved about impossible. Noticing their torso and, more importantly, what that torso was garbed in, remained possible, however.
The team of DongWon Oh, Eldar Shafir, and Alexander Todorov write,
"Faces were shown with different upper-body clothing rated by independent judges as looking 'richer' or 'poorer', although not notably perceived as such when explicitly described. The same face when seen with 'richer' clothes was judged significantly more competent than with 'poorer' clothes."
Clothing Matters | Jan Erickson | TEDxColoradoSprings
Before beginning, the researchers asked a separate panel of judges to ensure that the clothing they chose was not overtly wealthy or representative of extreme poverty. Those partaking in the study were told to judge the competence of the faces they saw on a scale from one to nine based on "gut feeling."
In a few of the nine studies clothing was explicitly mentioned, though the judges were told to not consider what the people were wearing. In one, they claimed that there was no relationship between clothing and competence.
It didn't matter. In every single study, those rocking finer threads were deemed more competent, even when the same man was shown in different tops. If he was wearing nice clothes, he was deemed more competent than when wearing a t-shirt.
These perceptions influence who we vote for and where we spend our money. Oh believes this is especially important in the age of widespread income inequality.
"Wealth inequality has worsened since the late 1980s in the United States. Now the gap between the top 1 percent and the middle class is over 1,000,000 percent, a mind-numbing figure. Other labs' work has shown people are sensitive to how rich or poor other individuals appear. Our work found that people are susceptible to these cues when judging others on meaningful traits, like competence, and that these cues are hard, if not impossible, to ignore."
The researchers hope that by making people aware of their implicit bias toward clothing, such awareness can later translate into better decision-making about the judgment of an individual's character. As we learn over and over again, fine clothing does not necessary represent an ethical or honest person. It just means they can afford to purchase it.
Rapper Post Malone visits SiriusXM Studio on November 30, 2016 in New York City.
Photo credit: Matthew Eisman/Getty Images
Yet this lesson will be a hard lesson to instill. Clothing has long been representative of social status. Shoes were once a social marker separating those who could afford them compared to those that had to wear sandals or go barefoot. At root, humans are extremely shallow: we'd rather show off what we can afford than help others achieve the same status.
Shafir goes so far to claim that uniformity might be the way to go.
"A potential, even if highly insufficient, interim solution may be to avoid exposure whenever possible. Just like teachers sometimes grade blindly so as to avoid favoring some students, interviewers and employers may want to take what measures they can, when they can, to evaluate people, say, on paper so as to circumvent indefensible yet hard to avoid competency judgments. Academic departments, for example, have long known that hiring without interviews can yield better scholars. It's also an excellent argument for school uniforms."
That will be a hard sell an individualistic culture such as America, where outward appearance too often trumps inner character. As long as that's the case, we have to recognize ourselves for what we are: judgmental creatures focused on exterior presentation. Inner work takes practice, but the benefits — namely, not being conned or focused on fleeting materialism — is worth it.
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Stay in touch with Derek on Twitter and Facebook. His next book is Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy.
How New York's largest hospital system is predicting COVID-19 spikes
Northwell Health is using insights from website traffic to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks in the future.
- The machine-learning algorithm works by analyzing the online behavior of visitors to the Northwell Health website and comparing that data to future COVID-19 hospitalizations.
- The tool, which uses anonymized data, has so far predicted hospitalizations with an accuracy rate of 80 percent.
- Machine-learning tools are helping health-care professionals worldwide better constrain and treat COVID-19.
The value of forecasting
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Credit: Northwell Health
<p>One unique benefit of forecasting COVID-19 hospitalizations is that it allows health systems to better prepare, manage and allocate resources. For example, if the tool forecasted a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations in two weeks, Northwell Health could begin:</p><ul><li>Making space for an influx of patients</li><li>Moving personal protective equipment to where it's most needed</li><li>Strategically allocating staff during the predicted surge</li><li>Increasing the number of tests offered to asymptomatic patients</li></ul><p>The health-care field is increasingly using machine learning. It's already helping doctors develop <a href="https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2020/06/09/dc19-1870" target="_blank">personalized care plans for diabetes patients</a>, improving cancer screening techniques, and enabling mental health professionals to better predict which patients are at <a href="https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ehr-data-fuels-accurate-predictive-analytics-for-suicide-risk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">elevated risk of suicide</a>, to name a few applications.</p><p>Health systems around the world have already begun exploring how <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7315944/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">machine learning can help battle the pandemic</a>, including better COVID-19 screening, diagnosis, contact tracing, and drug and vaccine development.</p><p>Cruzen said these kinds of tools represent a shift in how health systems can tackle a wide variety of problems.</p><p>"Health care has always used the past to predict the future, but not in this mathematical way," Cruzen said. "I think [Northwell Health's new predictive tool] really is a great first example of how we should be attacking a lot of things as we go forward."</p>Making machine-learning tools openly accessible
<p>Northwell Health has made its predictive tool <a href="https://github.com/northwell-health/covid-web-data-predictor" target="_blank">available for free</a> to any health system that wishes to utilize it.</p><p>"COVID is everybody's problem, and I think developing tools that can be used to help others is sort of why people go into health care," Dr. Cruzen said. "It was really consistent with our mission."</p><p>Open collaboration is something the world's governments and health systems should be striving for during the pandemic, said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health's president and CEO.</p><p>"Whenever you develop anything and somebody else gets it, they improve it and they continue to make it better," Dowling said. "As a country, we lack data. I believe very, very strongly that we should have been and should be now working with other countries, including China, including the European Union, including England and others to figure out how to develop a health surveillance system so you can anticipate way in advance when these things are going to occur."</p><p>In all, Northwell Health has treated more than 112,000 COVID patients. During the pandemic, Dowling said he's seen an outpouring of goodwill, collaboration, and sacrifice from the community and the tens of thousands of staff who work across Northwell.</p><p>"COVID has changed our perspective on everything—and not just those of us in health care, because it has disrupted everybody's life," Dowling said. "It has demonstrated the value of community, how we help one another."</p>3,000-pound Triceratops skull unearthed in South Dakota
"You dream about these kinds of moments when you're a kid," said lead paleontologist David Schmidt.
Excavation of a triceratops skull in South Dakota.
- The triceratops skull was first discovered in 2019, but was excavated over the summer of 2020.
- It was discovered in the South Dakota Badlands, an area where the Triceratops roamed some 66 million years ago.
- Studying dinosaurs helps scientists better understand the evolution of all life on Earth.
Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We had to be really careful," Schmidt told St. Louis Public Radio. "We couldn't disturb anything at all, because at that point, it was under law enforcement investigation. They were telling us, 'Don't even make footprints,' and I was thinking, 'How are we supposed to do that?'"</p><p>Another difficulty was the mammoth size of the skull: about 7 feet long and more than 3,000 pounds. (For context, the largest triceratops skull ever unearthed was about <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.2010.483632" target="_blank">8.2 feet long</a>.) The skull of Schmidt's dinosaur was likely a <em>Triceratops prorsus, </em>one of two species of triceratops that roamed what's now North America about 66 million years ago.</p>Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
<p>The triceratops was an herbivore, but it was also a favorite meal of the T<em>yrannosaurus rex</em>. That probably explains why the Dakotas contain many scattered triceratops bone fragments, and, less commonly, complete bones and skulls. In summer 2019, for example, a separate team on a dig in North Dakota made <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" target="_blank">headlines</a> after unearthing a complete triceratops skull that measured five feet in length.</p><p>Michael Kjelland, a biology professor who participated in that excavation, said digging up the dinosaur was like completing a "multi-piece, 3-D jigsaw puzzle" that required "engineering that rivaled SpaceX," he jokingly told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>.</p>Morrison Formation in Colorado
James St. John via Flickr
Triceratops illustration
Credit: Nobu Tamura/Wikimedia Commons |
World's oldest work of art found in a hidden Indonesian valley
Archaeologists discover a cave painting of a wild pig that is now the world's oldest dated work of representational art.
Pig painting at Leang Tedongnge in Indonesia, made at 45,500 years ago.
- Archaeologists find a cave painting of a wild pig that is at least 45,500 years old.
- The painting is the earliest known work of representational art.
- The discovery was made in a remote valley on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Oldest Cave Art Found in Sulawesi
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a9734e306f0914bfdcbe79a1e317a7f0"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b-wAYtBxn7E?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>What can Avicenna teach us about the mind-body problem?
The Persian polymath and philosopher of the Islamic Golden Age teaches us about self-awareness.
The incredible physics behind quantum computing
Can computers do calculations in multiple universes? Scientists are working on it. Step into the world of quantum computing.
