THE IMPACT OF FORMALITY AND SIMILARITY OF ATTIRE ON OBSERVERS' DESCRIPTIONS OF INTERPERSONAL EVENTS

The present study was an examination of the influence of attire upon perceptions of interpersonal interactions. Subjects' responses to drawings of persons involved in communication situations were recorded during interviews incorporating a free-response method with follow-up questions.; Subjects were 64 male and female employees of private business establishments in Austin, Texas. Stimulus materials were four line drawings of male/female dyads depicted in business office settings. The interviewer asked subjects to describe what was going on in each of the pictures. Responses were audiotaped and transcribed.; Four treatments of each picture were devised. The apparel of the stimulus persons was varied according to norms of formality for a traditional business office setting. In accordance with a Latin square repeated measures design, each subject saw one treatment of each picture and only one view of each treatment across pictures.; Adopting a grounded theory approach, a content analysis system was developed directly from the picture descriptions. The researcher, along with two other content analysis experts, examined a representative sampling of the picture descriptions for recurring themes. A taxonomy of themes was constructed and adopted as a coding scheme for the picture descriptions. Trait, behavior, attitude, and role attributions were categorized. Forty-five categories were isolated.; Two judges were trained in the use of the category system. After dividing the descriptions into units of analysis, the judges applied the content system to all manuscripts. All disagreements in category assignment were negotiated by the two judges until agreement was reached.; To examine the effect of experimental treatments on category usage by subjects, the frequency of separate categories were summed for each description. As a control for verbosity of subjects, the sums were converted to a proportion of total statement units in a description. The proportional data were treated with an arcsin transformation and entered into analyses of variance.; The causal and formal business apparel had a fairly pervasive impact on content of the subjects' responses. The formality of clothing had a significant effect upon distribution of role and status attributions. Behavior and trait descriptions varied according to formality treatment, but only in descriptions of male stimulus persons. Descriptions of interpersonal attitudes and social context also varied according to formality and similarity of stimulus person clothing. In general, the clothing cues had a greater influence on descriptions of relationships than upon trait inferences. Differences due to sex of subject were minimal but reflected a slightly greater informativeness of the formality symbols for the male subjects. Overall, a fairly elaborate integration of concepts was constructed around the clothing symbols.