WEATHER & EARTH SCIENCE RESOURCES |
|
OTHER ACADEMIC COURSES, STUDENT RESEARCH, OTHER STUFF
|
|
TEACHING TOOLS & OTHER STUFF
 |
Abstract
This project is a brief synopsis of research conducted regarding the association between the way one looks and the way that that person is perceived because of their choice in dress. We focus on a sales situation involving cake. People like cake, but will their assessment of how the seller dresses affect this desire for some tasty spongy-goodness?
By staking out the Fairfield Public Library, we set up shop across the "street" on the outskirts of a fine little park. It was here that our data was collected. Through the course of the day, cake was sold, wedding parties strolled passed, and outfits were changed.
Introduction
Fashion has been a subject of interest for many centuries. Fads come and go; some may trickle down through the years, becoming more in-link with "popular" fashion. As one struggles to be different, soon this obscure approach in dress is slowly intermingled with the popular culture, defeating its purpose as a trendsetter. A new fad is then introduced to recreate the once-held sideways glances that the previous fad had accomplished. Whether the person intends to dress to impress or to shock, either way they will have some kind of response to their outward appearance.
The purpose of this research project is to distinguish just how effected a personÕs judgment is by the appearance of another. In an every-day "sales" scenario, does the customer feel more enticed to at least glance at the product if the person selling is dressed more attractively? Or are they turned off by a shabby-looking sales associate? Also, does the appearance of the seller reflect the quality of the product? Does their negative attitude toward the seller affect their opinion of the product at sale?
Our hypothesis is that, yes, a personÕs attitude will be affected by the appearance of the people surrounding them. No matter how trivial the situation, and though they may not quite realize what they are doing, the person discriminating against the other will still find ways to disclaim association with the other person and walk away.
Also, we hypothesis that the opinion of the quality of the product is also tainted as a person
would most consider that, if the (wo)man selling the merchandise does not appear fit to be in the personal question:
sales-position, then most certainly not will the would you buy a pickle from this boy?
product be of any worth. É09
We cam e up with this research idea because we were mainly interested in how people see themselves and others. And also, how they accomplish this, whether it is through permanent or temporary physical alterations. The idea of how fashion influences peoplesÕ thoughts is an interesting one and we decided to pursue this field more carefully.
What we plan to accomplish is to not only prove our hypothesis, but also to perhaps develop a better analysis in understanding why people act how they do. Most people claim that they do not discriminate against others and that they are all about equal opportunities. However, in the back of their minds, still just judgment is passed and this equality that is normally practiced is somehow neglected. So why do people continue to allow such frivolous characteristics create such a strong impact on how they act?
This particular topic of research is interesting because it is a theme that is constantly regenerating as more and more years pass. Think about the womenÕs movement in the twenties. Suddenly to dress differently reflected that one also thought differently, reflections against the tides of the typical male-oriented elitist thoughts.
Punk, mod, hippieness, alternative. Each is an identity one decides to give to oneself to either separate them from the typical "norm," or just to feel a sense of belonging into a particular group of people. Fashion is a sign of social change. Being the curious species that we are, we are often times intrigued by why we do what we do, therefore any bit of change causes us to stare intently into the "problem" (good or bad) in an attempt to figure out what happened.
Relevance of the Research
Many people over the years have used the assessment of dress as the focus of their occupational being. Books are written, movies created, studies conducted.
A name that continues to appear in our research is Alison Lurie, author of a popular non-fiction book entitled, The Language of Clothes written in 1981. Here she "has few doubts that we all employ tell-tale details in our dress to allude to other interior qualities." Our dress is a reflection of who we are, or what we yearn to be. People use dress to influence the minds of others, to create an intense roar in the reactions of others. People strive and compete for attention, some more than others. Sometimes this roar is just what is needed to have that extra push in front of the others. Sometimes there is no roar at all, only a little mew, as claws cling to the nearest wall. "DonÕt look at me!" is what is cried. "Look at them!"
Fashion is an underrated social force. Thorstein Veblen, a nineteenth-century analysis, focuses on the new American bourgeoisie and leisure classes. He claims that the upper classes "invented fashion to distinguish themselves from those below." The intense reactions that dress creates has just become an overlooked process of discrimination. Yet it guides our society and shapes it with every placed scarf and pant leg. Is it a distinction of social class? Perhaps to a certain extent yes, but it is mostly a personÕs judgment and ideal images of how one should dress that creates this distinction. As Joanne Finkelstein states in her article, entitled "Chic Theory," "the association between appearance and character remains so common, for instance, in our stereotyping of race and gender, that its ubiquity naturalizes it."
Andrew Tucker and Tamsin Kingswell have compiled a book entitled Fashion. With every turn of the page, a new historical view or fashion insight is introduced. They talk about the impact that fashion has had on society and the impact of society on fashion. "Clothing has become a kind of visual currency that people understand and what to buy into."
A study that was conducted similar to ours, at least, along the same lines, was by John T. Malloy. Playing a man who had left his wallet at home, he circulated around Grand Central Station in New York City asking for money to get home. He explained his story and said that all he needed was seventy-five cents. He did this for two hours during the rush hour. The first hour he was without a tie, but wore a suit. The second hour he added the tie. Within that first segment, he made $7.23; the second segment $26.00, with one man actually giving him an extra dollar to purchase a newspaper. It is amazing to see that such a simple addition to oneÕs dress can create such an impact. Malloy has conducted hundreds of studies, experiments, and tests over a period of years and has concluded "what a person wears is directly related to the success he will have in life."
A larger question that this research relates to is the overall reaction people have to appearance and the struggle to achieve Perfection. Perfection is this ideal state that people have that can never be within a personÕs grasp. Goals are always set, and even if they are achieved, more are set. It is impossible to be totally content with oneself, at least, for the majority of people. A major part of perfection is beauty.
Within Naomi WolfÕs book, The Beauty Myth, she states, " ŌBeautyÕ is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics." We determine how beauty needs to be. And yet, we seem to set this standard higher than anyone could ever reach. Then why do we set such impossible goals?
This project will make its contribution to the broader base of human knowledge with its intense intellect and social-awareness. Well, maybe not entirely through that, but if anything else, it will make a fine contribution through the information that it offers. People are aware that the striving towards Beautiful Perfection is the new American Dream, however many times the idea of fashion is overlooked. The "ideal" weight is often fought for, the "flawless" nose, the perfectly formed bosoms. People believe that if they physically-alter their outward looks, then they will magically transform into this perfect ideal them.
A person can dress respectably and receive the reverence that they deserve. A person can dress in wonderful color and become this center of curiosity as their clothes just shout, look at me! I am a neat person! How one dresses becomes who they are and we hope through this research to demonstrate to people just that.
Materials and Methods:
In order to test whether or not people would be more likely to respond to an upper or lower class person, our group decided to set up a cake stand. We set up our cake stand outside of the Fairfield Public Library. We chose this location because of the fact that there was a park right across from the library. This would give us access to a more random sample. Our stand was set up right across from the library where people would be getting into and out of their cars and right at the entrance to the park where people had to walk if they were going to get in. We sold our cake on a nice Saturday presumably when people would be outside and, since it was a Saturday, possibly researching for a homework assignment or finding books. Due to the fact that our stand was in a major traffic location, we felt that we would have the best and most random results. We chose not to sell the cake at Miami because we wanted to get away from the students and into a community with a greater age variance. This would eliminate possible bias from a homogenous population that is accustomed to research experiments and might not be fooled by our clothing changes.
Our group felt that it would be necessary to create some incentive for the customers to buy our cake. We felt that we should do this because it might have made it harder for us to sell our product without any reason. We created incentive by selling the cake for fifty cents or donations and telling them that we would be giving the money to a local charity. In order to make this something they would want to help out with, the charity we gave the money to was the "One Way Farm" . This is a well-known charity in the town of Fairfield. The way we came across this charity was by asking my grandmother, who was born and raised in Hamilton, has taught in the school district and lived in Fairfield for fifty years, what charity we could give the money to so that the people would know what weÕre selling for and want to donate. This incentive would eliminate any question as to our motives in selling the cake.
The most important part of our research assignment was the clothing. We did trials dressed in upper and lower class attire. The upper class attire consisted of a nice skirt/pants, a blouse, nice hair, make-up, and nice shoes while the lower class attire consisted of jeans with holes in them, old tennis shoes, our bikini tops, and a grungy button up shirt on over them. Our hair was down when we were "lower class" and we didnÕt remove the make-up because we had no way of doing so outside. We were going to have different signs, one very colorful and the other very plain but, after the professor reviewed that, we all determined that it would be better for our results to not work in the signs as an independent variable because it did not pertain to our hypothesis. What we did instead was to make one sign for both trials that was very plain but specific. It told the customers that we were selling cake for fifty cents or donations and that we were giving our profit to the One Way Farm. We also addressed the problem that maybe people did not want cake that day so we offered orange juice, apple juice, and water as well, assuming that, due to the fact that it was a warm day and we were by a park where children were playing, they might want some juice instead. We also included the juice in our sign, which read, "Support the One Way FarmÉCake and Juice for SaleÉ50 cents or donations". We made the sign to be as simple as possible so it would not bias our results. We got the cake and juice with our IDs at Belltower. The cake, which we shared with the class in order to get their approval on our product, was very decorative and said; "Start Your Summer Out with Love". We chose this lettering to help with our incentive to buy our product. We didnÕt want our potential customers assuming that the cake had a problem with it or that we were selling it to simply make money for ourselves. Our only independent variable in this experiment was our clothing choice. Everything else was staged in order to make the best sale. We carefully made all of these plans so as to eliminate any other extraneous variables, which might affect the sale of our cake.
With all of this set up complete, we had to choose the correct times to sell the cake. We chose to sell the cake in three thirty-minute intervals for each ensemble. We talked to the professor about our plan and determined all of the probable biases based on what time we decided to sell our product. Based on our location and the suggestions of the professor, we decided to sell our cake from 11:00 AM to around 2:30 PM. The reason we chose this time slot was so that we could eliminate the problem of people not being hungry. We were outside of the library and by the park so we wanted to make sure we were testing before and after lunch. We wanted to make sure that not being hungry, or not feeling like eating cake before lunch was not a problem variable in our experiment. So, in order to carry out an experiment with the least possible amount of bias, we set up our stand at 10:30 outside of the library to allow time for the set up and to change into costume. At 11:00 AM, we began selling cake dressed in our upper class attire and recorded the amount of cake/juice sold in that thirty minute time period. We say 2:30 because we had to grant time for wardrobe changes. After thirty minutes, we changed into our lower class clothing and recorded the amount of cake/juice sold in that time period. We then repeated this procedure two more times, continuing to record the amount of sales we had during each interval. After recording all the data, we processed it and compared it in order to determine whether or not our perceived "status" had any affect on whether or not we sold cake.
We feel that the way we compiled our research experiment eliminates, to the best of our ability, bias in our results. As can be seen in the above description of our procedure, we took many different extraneous variables into account and did our best to eliminate them. We asked the class and our professor for opinions and ended up eliminating some of our original ideas because they did not seem to fit in with our hypothesis. We included the consideration of possible bias, as well as outside suggestions from our professor and class, above in our discussion of our procedure.
We were surprised at the amount of materials we needed when we actually sat down during one meeting and discussed our procedure. The most obvious materials were our wardrobes. We needed to have a costume for both upper and lower class to project that status. For the lower class attire, both of us wore jeans with holes in the knees, ratty tennis shoes, our bathing suit tops, and ratty shirts over them that we got from thrift stores. We had our hair down and attempted to get the look that we didnÕt take much care of our hair every day. For our upper class attire, Jill wore a nice blouse, a nice skirt, matching shoes, make-up, and barrettes in her hair for the affect of someone who takes a great deal of care in their appearance. Erin wore black pants, a nice shirt with a matching black three-quarter-length sweater in case it got cold, and matching shoes. Her hair was up and she was also wearing make-up, also giving the impression of concern for her appearance. The signs were compiled of white poster board and crayon. We made the letters legible from a distance and wrote big but we made them simple and without a lot of decoration. We needed a table and two chairs for our stand and we had to buy plates, plastic forks, and cups for the cake and juice to be served on. We needed a cooler and ice to keep the juice cool and we had a knife to cut the cake. The other most important part of the experiment was the cake. We got the cake from Belltower Place with our IDs and made it very decorative. The box it was in wasnÕt as decorative as the cake so it would not look expensive and throw our results. The writing on the cake said, "Start Your Summer Out with Love". This was to make sure that the cake was attractive to a customer and to eliminate the possibility that she or he would be skeptical as to our intentions in selling the cake or of what is in the cake. The last material that was necessary but might not be thought of at first was change for the people we were selling to.
We involved the class in our study by bringing leftover cake to class and allowing them and the professor to sample our product. This ensured that it was satisfactory to sell and proved that there was nothing wrong with what we were selling. Their approval allowed us to determine that no bias was formed from the fact that our product was not satisfactory to the tastebuds of our clients. We recorded data by making a mark on a prepared data sheet every time someone came up to buy our cake or juice. An example of our data sheet can be seen in Table 1. We placed a mark in the section for each trial every time we sold a piece of cake in the allotted thirty-minute time period.
The timeline for our project is very specific. We presented our first poster project in class. We started off going to jewelry stores dressed as upper or lower class citizens. Then we compared reactions of the clerks to us based on our appearance. We presented this to the class and received a lot of feedback. It was very interesting to hear the responses of the class. They suggested we change our project to something that hasnÕt been done before so that is how we determined the cake idea. We planned out this experiment and presented it in our proposal. We got the feedback from the professor and made the necessary changes in our project from his suggestions. We were originally going to have two different signs, one plain, and one elaborate in an attempt to incorporate that into our hypothesis, but after the professorÕs feedback we agreed that the signs werenÕt needed. So we organized our plan and carried it out on a Saturday as soon as the weather was nice enough. We got to our site at 10:30 AM and set up our stand. We dressed in our upper class attire and at 11:00 AM, began selling our cake and marking every sale on our data sheet. At 11:30 we changed into our lower class clothing and began selling again at 11:40. After thirty minutes we changed again into our upper class clothing and began selling and recording our sales again at 12:20. We continued this process until we had tested both costumes three times at thirty-minute intervals. We then came back, compiled the data, and allowed the class to sample our cake in order to make sure that the cake tasted ok and that the customers liked it if they bought it. The last thing we are doing is this lab write-up and more research to include in our introduction so we can fully explain our results.
Results:
After collecting our data, we ran it through Microsoft Exel in order to determine whether or not our data was significant. We ran a t-Test for paired Two Sample for Means. The chart can be seen in Table 3. In both the one and the two tail t-Test results, we found our p-value to be greater than .05. The p-value for the one tailed test was .059 which is very close to .05 but ist still slightly over. This could show some significance. The p-value for the two tailed t-test is .118 which is clearly greater than .05. The T-Criticals for both tests were greater than the t Stat as well. The mean was 5.333333 and the variance was 2.333333. All of our results can be seen directly in Table 3 below. We made graphs and a chart of our data as well. These can be seen in Tables 4 and 5.
Fun Discussion and Conclusions!!
Based on all that we did, we have come to the conclusion of several things. One, some, though not nearly as many as expected, people would rather give up a happily scrumptious piece of cake all because of the appearance of the sellers. What can we say? We tried our best to be the wonderful cake-spokespeople, but if people will judge the cake because of us, it is their loss.
Our results show the p-values to be greater than .05. This leads us to conclude that the data is not significant and does not support our hypothesis that the clothing had an affect on whether or not people would buy cake from us. This leads us to reject the null hypothesis and conclude that our data is not significant. So basically, the people of Fairfield did not judge us on our clothing. This does not prove that by any means but that is what the data is telling us. The p-value for the one tailed t-test was very close to .05 which shows some significance, but the t-Criticals were greater than the t Stat number and this tells us that the data was not significant. We were surprised to find these results because, based on our previous research, we were expecting to find that people would be more likely to buy cake from us if we looked like we were from the upper class rather than from the lower class.
Based on the background research we buried ourselves in, it is interesting to compare our findings with that of others. John T. MalloyÕs experiment that was stated earlier is neat because it reflects a similar situation as ours. People judged him by his appearance though it was just a simple change from no tie to pro-tie in this scenario. However MalloyÕs experiment was a bit more eye-opening in his results, as it was interesting to see how such a minute change in appearance can effect the way people treat you.
Contrarily, however, most research that was conducted over fashion and its influence in society says quite the opposite as out results. Even if you think about it, common sense would tell you that ones outer appearance affects othersÕ judgment, then why does our research say just the opposite? Alison Lurie states that everything about oneÕs personal style is subject to be "processed and interpreted by society, including the cut, fabric and colors of our clothes, make up, accessories and hair style."
The study of sociology is also sometimes focused on the way people look, as it makes up a strong part of our culture. "Sociologists who have dealt with fashion as mechanism of social control have focused their attention on the relationship between fashion and custom" Theorists such as Veblen and Simmel regard differentiation a stratification as necessary circumstances for fashion. Others such as Smelser and Blumer believe that fashion is an expression of purely collective behavior, focusing on "positive wish fulfillment." Even Mark Twain is quoted as saying, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." So overall, this project fits okay into the works of others, however in some cases it can just be used as a negative example and to say that sometimes the urge for cake is more powerful than the urge for discrimination.
Additional questions that we have are as follows: What made people buy/not buy the delicious cake from us? Obviously our dress did not entirely affect their views (understandably, it is cakeÉ), so was there any other shift factor that made them not want this cake? The most exciting find that we had was that there really just was not much of a difference in Fairfield, a nicer area, in the way that the people reacted to our appearance. We also had believed that we had proved our hypothesis correct, until our data was compiled. That was also a true shocker.
Suggestions that we have for further investigations are to perhaps try out a variety of locations to perform the experiment (?). Perhaps people at Fairfield Public Library just hate cake? Or hate charity? Or maybe it is just because we were across the parking lot of a library. Also, perhaps try out a variety of class-leveled areas. Nicer areas versus more run-down places?
To do differently, other than using a variety of locations next time, we would also talk to the people that buy, or not buy, our cake and ask them what their initial reactions to us were. Perhaps have them fill out a survey or conduct an interview?
Table 1: Data Recording Chart
Upper Class Lower Class
Trial 1:
Trial 2:
Trial 3:
Table 2: Data Chart
Upper Class Lower Class
Trial One 5 4
Trial Two 4 2
Trial Three 7 3
Table 3: Data Analysis Results
Variable 1 Variable 2
Mean 5.333333 3
Variance 2.333333 1
Observations 3 3
Pearson Correlation 0.327327
Hypothesized Mean Difference 0
df 2
t Stat 2.645751
P(T<=t) one-tail 0.059041
t Critical one-tail 2.919987
P(T<=t) two-tail 0.118083
t Critical two-tail 4.302656
Table 4: Data Chart
Table 5: Data Graph
Literature Cited
Brumberg, Joan Jacobs, The Body Project, New York: Random House, 1997.
Wolf, Naomi, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women,
New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991, p. 12.
"Fashion, Hierarchy and Social Control," Problem-Based Learning, (2001). http://www.ucd.ie/~sociolog/soc3026.html
Joanne Finkelstein, "Chic Theory," Australian Humanities Review (1995). http://fashion.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lib.latrobe.edu.au%2FAHR%2Farchive%2FIssue-March-1997%2Ffinkelstein.html
Tucker, Andrew and Tamsin Kingswell, Fashion: A Crash Course, New York: Watson-Guptill Publicatins, 2000, p. 8.
Dr. David C. Innes, "What Do Your Clothes Say About You?" (1993). http://www.hsbchurch.org/dress2.htm
Lurie, Alison, The Language of Clothes, New York: Random House, 1981.
Synthetics: working class
Next Article
Previous Article
Return to the Topic Menu
IMPORTANT: For each Response, make sure the title of the response is different than previous titles shown above!
WEATHER & EARTH SCIENCE RESOURCES |
|
OTHER ACADEMIC COURSES, STUDENT RESEARCH, OTHER STUFF
|
|
TEACHING TOOLS & OTHER STUFF
|
Listen to a "Voice Navigation" Intro!
(Quicktime or