Appearances Count: Designer Clothes Equal Unfair Advantages

A new study cited by The Economist comes to contradict all that we’ve learned at home and in school about how it matters who you are on the inside and how appearances don’t (or shouldn’t) count in all those important moments in life.

As it turns out, they do. People who wear designer clothes with a recognizable logo can get unfair advantages over people who don’t, because they imply a certain social status that not everybody can afford.

Rob Nelissen and Marijn Meijers of Tilburg University in the Netherlands conducted the study that will be published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, and it will prove that men do tend to be shallow like that and place too much importance on looks.

Among the findings of the study, we find that people who wear recognizable designer clothes can get more people to give money to charity, are more likely to get a job and have better odds of getting more money.

The key word here is “recognizable” though, because the logos on the designer brands have to be universally known, otherwise the above will not apply, researchers have found.

The compare the way people react to designer clothes to how the peacock with the most beautiful tail gets all the females.

The difference is that, while man remains oblivious to fakes, peacocks never fall for the fake thing.

The findings of the study can be applied to a wider area than just fashion and getting by at work or in our daily intercourse with people.

“This study confirms a wider phenomenon. A work of art’s value, for example, can change radically, depending on who is believed to have created it, even though the artwork itself is unchanged. And people will willingly buy counterfeit goods, knowing they are knock-offs, if they bear the right label,” the Economist writes.

“What is interesting is that the label is so persuasive. In the case of the peacock, the tail works precisely because it cannot be faked. An unhealthy bird’s feathers will never sparkle. But humans often fail to see beyond the superficial. For humans, then, the status-assessment mechanism is going wrong,” the publication says.

For the exact details of how the study was conducted and all the findings, please refer here.