Dressed Emotions: How Attire and Emotion Expressions Influence First Impressions

Both the way a person dresses and their emotion expressions influence interpersonal perception, yet the combined impact of attire and emotional expressions remains understudied. We investigated how attire, as a signal of status, interacts with emotional expressions to create first impressions. For this, using digital manipulation, faces from a validated dataset were inserted into a matching body, dressed according to the relevant experimental condition and shown from the knees up. Study 1 (N = 102) examined inferences drawn from formal versus casual attire in business and party contexts. Study 2 (N = 849) explored how these dress styles, combined with expressions of anger, sadness, and neutrality, affected observers’ perceptions of the expresser’s traits and emotion expressions across both contexts. Results indicate that even though attire consistently informs inferences about status, dominance, and to a lesser extent, affiliation, across contexts and genders, emotion expressions exert a stronger influence on these judgments. Attire also impacted emotion perception, affecting ratings of secondary emotions and the perceived authenticity of expressions, with emotions of formally dressed individuals perceived as less authentic. These findings suggest that when emotional information is available, observers rely more heavily on it than on stereotypes associated with dress formality or gender. Emotions may take precedence because, unlike attire, they offer insights into the expresser’s momentary state of mind.