Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-025-00479-y

ORIGINAL PAPER

Dressed Emotions: How Attire and Emotion Expressions

Influence First Impressions

Shlomo Hareli1 · Yaniv Hanoch2 · Shimon Elkabetz3 · Ursula Hess4

Accepted: 27 January 2025

© The Author(s) 2025

Abstract
Both the way a person dresses and their emotion expressions influence interpersonal per-
ception, yet the combined impact of attire and emotional expressions remains understud-
ied. 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 experi-
mental 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 neutral-
ity, 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.

What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when
human contacts are so quick. Fashion is instant language. —Miuccia Prada.

Ursula Hess
[email protected]
1
The Laboratory for the Study of Social Perception of Emotions, University of Haifa, Haifa,
Israel
2
The Center of Business in Society, Coventry University, Coventry, UK
3
Fuse Group, Fort Lauderdale, USA
4
Department of Psychology, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

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 Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

In 2018, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the U.S. Congress regard-
ing the company’s data privacy practices, many news outlets and commentators observed
that he was wearing a rather ill-fitting suit and appeared subdued. His conservative attire
was seen as an attempt to appear more serious, contrite, and in control of his emotions
during the high-stakes hearing (Friedman, 2018; Mahdawi, 2018). Similarly, in the 2016
U.S. presidential debates, Hillary Clinton’s preference for pantsuits was perceived by some
reporters as an attempt to convey a more emotionally reserved and presidential demeanor
(Friedman, 2016). As these news reports indicate, dress style is considered as informative
of people’s personality and goals and even their expected emotional reactions. Yet, nonver-
bal communication research has largely neglected this potential source of information (for
exceptions, see, Oh et al., 2020; Sotak et al., 2024).
The present research had the goal to investigate the role of attire for the formation of first
impressions. Notably, in most situations, attire will combine with another potent source of
information about people’s personality and goals – emotional facial expressions (Hareli &
Hess, 2010; Knutson, 1996). However, to our knowledge no study to date has considered
the joint effect of emotion expression and attire on first impressions. Oh et al. (2020) studied
the interaction between facial features and attire for perceptions of competence. As facial
morphology and emotion expression can have similar effects (Adams et al., 2016; Hess et
al., 2009), this finding points to the importance of studying the interaction between facial
expressions and attire choice for the formation of first impressions.
Based on previous research (see below) we predicted a direct impact of attire on person
perception. Further, we expected that attire both influences emotion perception directly and
interacts with emotion expression to form first impressions. Figure 1 describes the underly-
ing model.

Attire

Traditionally, much of the research on the recognition of facial expressions used still pho-
tographs that are highly controlled with regard to appearance cues, often to the point of
removing even hairstyle cues by framing the faces in ovals (e.g., Calvo & Lundqvist, 2008;
Philip et al., 2018). In real-life, however, people regularly perceive faces in their natural
context, i.e., the body of the expresser and their attire (Hester & Hehman, 2023; Oh et al.,

Fig. 1 The influence of attire and emotion expression on first impressions

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Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

2020). As such, when considering the interaction between emotion expression and attire, it
is useful to consider attire as a nonverbal cue that frames the emotion expression.

Attire as a Social Signal

The way a person dresses has been shown to signal, among other things, how credible
(O’Neal & Lapitsky, 1991), sociable (Johnson et al., 1977) professional, intelligent, compe-
tent, efficient, honest, reliable (Kwon, 1992; Oh et al., 2020) and ethical (Sotak et al., 2024)
a person is. Thus, attire is one of the cues that observers use when forming first impressions
of others (Howlett et al., 2013). In a recent review, Hester and Hehman (2023) specify four
types of inferences that can be drawn from attire: social categories, cognitive states, status,
and aesthetics. These inferences are based on the fact that attire carries cultural meaning
(McCracken, 1988) based on the prevalent social and cultural norms (McCracken & Roth,
1989).
At the same time, emotion expressions can be a source of information for these very
same characteristics (Hareli & Hess, 2010). Specifically, observers can use the emotion
expressions of others to deduce the underlying appraisals. For example, seeing an angry
person leads to the conclusion that an important goal was obstructed, most likely through an
unjust act and further that the person sees themselves as competent to redress the situation
(Lerner & Tiedens, 2006). Thus, a person expressing anger can be perceived as more com-
petent than one who expresses, for example, sadness which does not lead to an attribution
of competence (Tiedens, 2001). As such, attire can be expected to interact with perceived
emotion expressions to influence first impressions.
In turn, information regarding social group membership gleaned from attire may influ-
ence both emotion recognition and the inferences drawn from emotions. For example,
knowing that a (male) expresser is black or of high status leads observers to more readily
label their expression as angry (Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2003; Ratcliff et al., 2012). In
the same vein, previous studies have shown that a person’s profession impacts judgments
about their emotions. For example, a person identified as a surgeon was rated as expressing
less intense emotions then when the same individual was identified differently. This differ-
ence in judgement is driven by the stereotype expectation that surgeons will control and
restrain their emotions (Hareli et al., 2013).

Attire as a Signal of Social Status

The present research focused on attire as a signal of status. Status can be defined as
‘‘the outcome of an evaluation of attributes that produces differences in respect and
prominence’’(Keltner et al., 2003, p. 266). Status refers to an individual’s standing in
the hierarchy of a group as a result of that person’s prestige, and the honor and deference
accorded to them by the group (Lovaglia & Houser, 1996) and it has been shown that people
are sensitive to cues that mark social status (Ridgeway, 1987). One factor that signals a per-
son’s social status and related constructs such as social power and competence is the way a
person dresses (Chang & Cortina, 2024; Damhorst, 1990; Hester & Hehman, 2023; Oh et
al., 2020). People who are dressed formally, such as in a business suit, are perceived as hav-

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ing higher status than people who are dressed casually (Fortenberry et al., 1978; Furnham et
al., 2013; Gouda-Vossos et al., 2019; Kwon & Johnson-Hillery, 1998).

Social Status and Emotion Expression

Importantly, people share beliefs about how individuals are expected to react emotionally
and the degree to which they are likely to express these reactions as a function of their status
(Keltner et al., 2003). For instance, Conway et al. (1999) found that participants perceived
low-status relative to high-status individuals as displaying less anger, disgust and happiness,
but more sadness and fear, and similar levels of love.
Importantly, high-status individuals are considered freer to express anger compared to
low-status individuals (Ridgeway & Johnson, 1990). Consequently, expressions of anger
can serve as a signal for status. In this vein, research by Tiedens (2001) found that men who
expressed anger were seen as more competent and were conferred higher status than men
expressing sadness. However, more recently, evidence for the notion that anger expressions
in a work context are perceived as inappropriate, an overreaction, and as a lack of self-
control and hence denote low rather than high status has also been advanced (Porat & Levy
Paluck, 2024). Regardless of the nature of the judgment, both lines of research share the
idea that the emotions that a person expresses inform status-related impressions and deci-
sions concerning the expresser.
Further, a given expression is typically perceived as reflecting emotions in addition to
the focal expression (i.e., secondary emotions) (Kafetsios & Hess, 2023; Russell & Fehr,
1987; Russell et al., 1993; Yrizarry et al., 1998). There is evidence that the effect of status on
emotion perception is not restricted to the perception of the focal emotion shown, but also
extends to the perception of these additional, secondary expressions. For example, Algoe et
al. (2000) found that even though fear expressions were rated as most fearful, any expres-
sion shown by a person high in status (a supervisor) was rated as signaling less fear than the
same expressions shown by a person with lower status (an employee). In sum, information
about the social status of an expresser affects the perception of both the focal emotion as
well as of secondary emotions. The effects of status on perceived emotions are consistent
with stereotypes suggesting that high-status people are more dominant, self-confident, emo-
tionally stable, and assertive than low-status people (Heilman et al., 1989).

Social Status and Emotional Authenticity

High-status individuals tend to be motivated to ensure that others are aware of their status.
To achieve this goal, they manage their impressions to make sure that others are aware
of their (positive) characteristics (Leary & Jongman-Sereno, 2017). This implies that they
manage and monitor their behavior in ways that may appear inauthentic even though they
signal real characteristics. As noted above, emotions signal status by communicating status
relevant information. Specifically, affective control theory posits that observers assume that
emotions displayed by others are consistent with the expresser’s status (Smith-Lovin, 1990).
As such, high-status individuals would be expected to show emotions that signal being in
control such as anger and neutrality (Hareli et al., 2009). In contrast, low-status individu-
als would be expected to show sadness (Tiedens, 2001) in a similar context. As such, one
can expect that observers will perceive expressions of anger and neutrality by individuals

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Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

wearing formal dress as a sign of high status and hence as more congruent but also as more
strategic. However, from a self-presentation perspective, all expressions shown by high sta-
tus individuals might be perceived as less authentic than those shown by individuals whose
attire denotes low status (Kim et al., 2017).

The Present Research

For the present research, we showed participants photos of individuals who wore either
casual or formal business or party clothes (see Fig. 2 for examples). We added party attire as
a context as much of the research cited above focused on attire in a business context. Adding
a party context allowed us to test whether effects generalize to a different context.
Study 1 served to assess the inferences that participants draw from the type of attire
(casual vs. formal) in the absence of a facial expression and depending on context. For this,
we blurred the faces as shown in Fig. 2. In Study 2, actors showed expressions of anger, sad-
ness and neutrality. Anger and sadness were chosen because these emotions are specifically
associated with status (Tiedens, 2001). Participants rated both focal and secondary emotions
and were asked to make inferences regarding the social dominance and affiliativeness of the
expresser as well as the authenticity of the expression shown. Context was varied by the
type of attire (business vs. party).
We predicted that dress style would serve as a signal of status. As such, we predicted
that individuals wearing formal attire would be perceived as more dominant and as having

Fig. 2 Examples of formal vs. causal business (upper row) and party (lower row) dress

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higher status. We further predicted, that in Study 2 the emotion expressions of individuals
wearing formal dress would be perceived as less authentic. Further, expressers showing
anger and neutrality would be rated as more dominant than those showing sadness. Based on
research showing that in general women are perceived as less dominant and more affiliative
(e.g., Hess et al., 2009) we expected this to be the case as well.

STUDY 1

Methods

Participants

A total of 102 (49 men, 48 women, and 5 who identified as other) US participants with a
mean age of 38 years (SD = 12.5) were recruited through Prolific Academic and completed
the study. Participants were paid £0.75 for an estimated duration of 5 min. The only exclu-
sion criterion was that participants had to have an approval rating of 90 or higher. This
allowed us to ensure the quality of the responses. A sensitivity analysis using simr (Green &
MacLeod, 2016) revealed more than 80% power for small to medium effect size of d = 0.35
for the focal main effect of attire.

Stimulus Materials

Facial expressions of anger, sadness and neutrality shown by four men and four women
were selected from the subset of young Caucasian adult posers of the Radboud faces data-
base. Using four posers strikes an optimal balance between experimental control and feasi-
bility, providing enough variation to represent different facial features and expressive styles
while keeping the experimental design manageable. The Radboud Faces Database (RaFD),
created by researchers at Radboud University Nijmegen, contains 67 models representing
eight emotions. The models were trained using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS),
with images taken from five angles and three gaze directions. We used the subset of images
with the frontal gaze direction and the 90 degree camera angle (facing the camera). The
relevant subset includes 20 adult Caucasian Dutch males and 19 adult Caucasian Dutch
females with an age range of 18–30 years, with a mean age of approximately 25 and 24
years for males and females, respectively. The choice of posers was arbitrary. Using Adobe
photoshop (Adobe, 2024), all faces were inserted into a matching body shown from the
knees up. Dressed bodies were created using Adobe Firefly, an AI generative text-to-image
tool (Adobe, 2023). Several images were generated for each condition, from which the
authors selected four that best fit the desired outcome. The criteria for selecting an image
were that it adhered to the desired dress style and that it fit the head well when the head was
replaced with the poser’s head. Table S1 in the supplementary materials shows the prompts
used to create the dressed bodies for the different study conditions.
The bodies of the posers varied somewhat, but all had a normal body shape. In select-
ing the specific dress styles for each condition, we consulted a fashion expert and a senior
business person to ensure that we selected the appropriate dress style for each condition.
For the business context, formal dress for both men and women consisted of a business suit

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Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

without a tie and a white shirt under the jacket. In the casual dress condition, posers wore
blue jeans. Men wore a blue sweater with a bright blue shirt underneath, and women wore a
long-sleeved blue T-shirt (see Fig. 2, upper row).
For the party context, heads were inserted into a matching body dressed for a formal vs.
informal party. Men were dressed in a blue lapel tuxedo, white shirt, and blue bow tie. The
tuxedo jacket had a two-button front closure. Women wore a blue cocktail satin sheath dress
with a blazer-style top. The dress had long sleeves, a notched lapel, and a v-neckline. The
waist was cinched with a matching belt, and the skirt was knee-length. In the casual party
dress condition, men wore a light blue, button-up dress shirt with long sleeves and blue
jeans and women were dressed in a light blue belted shirt dress. Blue shades for all clothing
varied from light blue to slightly darker blue between expressers to allow for some variation
(see Fig. 2, lower row). Women’s dresses were chosen to not expose skin on the torso as
this may have separate effects on social perceptions. For Study 1 all faces were blurred. In
a between-participants design, each participant saw one man and one woman of a different
identity, wearing either casual or a formal attire from one of the two contexts. Actors were
counterbalanced across participants.

Procedure and Dependent Measures

For the manipulation check, participants rated each photo on the degree to which the per-
son appeared to have high status. They also rated each person with regard to their level of
self-confidence, competence, professionalism, trustworthiness, dependability, cheerfulness,
approachability, and friendliness. In addition, they rated their emotional authenticity and the
degree to which they adhere to norms. All ratings were made on 7-point Likert scales rang-
ing from 0 (not at all) to 6 (to a large extent).
A principal component analysis with Varimax rotation was conducted on these ratings.
A two-factor solution that explained 63.8% of the variance was chosen based on the scree-
plot (see markdown in the supplementary materials for details). Due to high cross loading
(> 0.4) dependable was excluded from further analysis. Based on this analysis, two com-
posite scores were created: dominance (self-confidence, competence, professionalism, and
adheres to norms, α = 0.73) and affiliation (trustworthiness, cheerfulness, approachability,
friendliness, and authenticity, α = 0.88).

Compliance with Ethical Standards

The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work. The
authors have no competing interests to declare.
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance
with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki
Declaration and its later amendments (except for pre-registration). The study was approved
by the Ethics committee of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Haifa (No.
119/24, the identity of the institution was removed to facilitate a blind review). The data and
the complete markdowns used for the analyses reported herein are freely available and can
be found at ​h​t​t​p​s​:​​/​/​o​s​f​​.​i​o​/​s​h​​v​z​8​/​​?​v​i​e​w​​_​o​n​l​y​​= ​8​3​9​0​9​​9​5​e​b​​b​d​f​4​8​f​d​9​8​3​2​3​a​a​b​2​6​4​0​3​b​3​2.

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 Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

Results

We conducted 2 (actor gender: male, female) x 2 (attire: causal, formal) x 2 (context: busi-
ness, party) mixed model analyses with the random factor participant id using lme4 (Bates
et al., 2015) and lmerTest (Kuznetsova et al., 2017) in Rstudio (RStudio Team, 2019).

Manipulation Check

For ratings of high status, the expected main effect of attire emerged, F(1,300) = 281.67,
p <.001, h= 0.43, such that individuals wearing formal dress (M = 4.87, SD = 0.97) were
rated as higher in status than individuals wearing casual dress (M = 3.21, SD = 1.29). In addi-
tion, an actor gender x context, F(1,300) = 20.20, p <.001, etap2 = 0.05, and the attire x actor
gender x context interaction, F(1,234) = 21.20, p <.001, etap2 = 0.03, emerged significantly.
As shown in Fig. 3, only for casual dress did actor gender have an impact on the per-
ceived status of the actor, which varied by context. Specifically, in the business context, men
were rated as having higher status than women, t300 = 5.99, p <.001, whereas in the party
context the opposite was the case, t300 = 4.55, p <.001.

Dominance

A significant main effect of attire, F(1,300) = 160.93, p <.001, etap2 = 0.31, emerged
such that, as expected, individuals wearing formal attire were perceived as more domi-
nant (M = 4.50, SD = 1.09) than individuals wearing casual attire (M = 4.00, SD = 1.14). A
figure showing means and standard errors can be found in the markdown. A significant
main effect of actor gender, F(1,300) = 4.17, p =.042, etap2 = 0.01, an attire by actor gender,
F(1,300) = 6.40, p =.012, etap2 = 0.02, and an attire by context interaction, F(1,300) = 4.97,
p =.026, etap2 = 0.02, were qualified by the three-way interaction, F(1,300) = 5.84, p =.016,
etap2 = 0.02. Specifically, context qualified the actor gender effect only for casual attire, such
that in the business context men wearing casual attire (M = 4.03, SD = 0.79) were rated as
more dominant than women (M = 3.46, SD = 0.91; t300 = 4.42, p <.001). For all other condi-
tions, no significant difference between men and women emerged, all t’s < 1. No further
main effects or interactions emerged significantly.

Affiliation

Significant main effects of attire, F(1,300) = 24.26, p <.001, etap2 = 0.06, and context,
F(1,300) = 12.42, p =.001, etap2 = 0.03, emerged, as well as a significant actor gender x con-
text interaction, F(1,300) = 12.43, p <.001, etap2 = 0.03. Specifically, individuals wearing
casual attire were overall perceived as more affiliative (M = 3.88, SD = 0.98) than individu-
als wearing formal attire (M = 3.52, SD = 1.06). Further, individuals in the business context
were rated as more affiliative (M = 3.96, SD = 1.02) than individuals in the party context
(M = 3.44, SD = 0.99). Finally, men in the party context were perceived as more affiliative
(M = 3.61, SD = 0.92) than women (M = 3.26, SD = 1.03, t300 = 3.39, p <.001), whereas in
the business context an opposite trend emerged (Mmen = 3.88, SD = 1.04; Mwomen = 4.04,
SD = 1.01, t300 = 1.60, p =.111). A figure showing means and standard errors can be found in
the markdown.

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Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

Fig. 3 Means and standard errors for perceived status as a function of actor gender, type of attire and
context

Discussion

The findings show that the formality of the attire that a person wears has a strong influ-
ence on perceived status and dominance and a somewhat lesser but still evident effect on
perceived affiliation. The central findings that individuals wearing formal attire were per-
ceived as higher in status as well as being more dominant and less affiliative than individuals
who wore casual attire was not qualified by gender or context. As suggested by previous
research focusing on business attire (e.g., Fortenberry et al., 1978; Furnham et al., 2013;
Gouda-Vossos et al., 2019; Kwon & Johnson-Hillery, 1998), wearing formal dress enhances
perceived status and dominance. Interestingly, this finding generalizes to the party context,
suggesting that formality in general might be associated with status. By contrast, the (small)
reduction in perceived affiliation suggests that wearing formal attire might make people
appear more distant.

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 Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

However, context did have some influence on perceived gender differences. Specifically,
context qualified the interaction between actor gender and attire for ratings of high status
and to a lesser degree for dominance ratings. Thus, men wearing casual business attire were
rated as higher in status than women, whereas the opposite was the case for party attire. In
both contexts, no gender differences emerged for people wearing formal attire.
This finding is rather interesting considering gender stereotypes. Even in modern egali-
tarian societies men are often attributed more status than women. This seems to be espe-
cially prevalent in the business context (Ridgeway, 2011). Thus, wearing a business suit (as
was done by Hillary Clinton) may indeed palliate this uneven initial perception, as gender
differences in perceived status and dominance disappeared when formal attire was worn.
Thus, for women wearing casual attire in a business context might backfire regarding their
perceived dominance – notably this composite variable also included the variables profes-
sionalism and competence, suggesting that women who wear casual attire in a business
context are perceived as somewhat lacking in these domains. By contrast in a party context,
women wearing casual dress may even be perceived as higher in status and at least as no
lower in dominance. Hence the issue here is less clear cut.
In sum, as expected, wearing formal attire influenced perceptions of status, dominance
and affiliation. Further, the gender of the actor interacted with attire and context. These
effects can be best attributed to prevailing gender stereotypes.
However, in addition to gender stereotypes, facial morphology can also signal domi-
nance and affiliation. Specifically, a square jaw, high forehead, or heavy eyebrows cross-
culturally connote social dominance (Keating, Mazur, & Segall, 1981; Keating et al., 1981;
Senior et al., 1999). On the other hand, a rounded face with large eyes, thin eyebrows, and
low facial features – a babyface – connotes approachability (e.g., Berry & McArthur, 1985).
The former is more commonly found for men, whereas the latter is more typical for women.
These morphological features then interact with emotion expressions, specifically anger and
happiness, in the perception of dominance and affiliation (Becker et al., 2007; Hess et al.,
2009). These effects were not relevant for Study 1 as faces were blurred and as such render-
ing facial morphology invisible.
However, in Study 2 facial expressions of anger and sadness as well as a neutral expres-
sion will be shown, hence gender effects may be even more prominent in this context.
The focus of Study 2 is therefore to assess the interaction between expresser gender, facial
expression and attire, in a party versus a business context.

STUDY 2

Methods

Participants

A total of 849 (402 men, 439 women, and 7 who identified as other) participants with a mean
age of 43 years (SD = 13.8) were recruited through Prolific Academic and completed the
study. Participants in this study saw only one photo, hence our goal was to recruit at least 30
participants per cell to assure adequate mean interrater reliability (Rosenthal, 2005).

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Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

Stimulus Materials

The stimuli described in Study 1 were used with the faces unblurred. This resulted in a 3
(emotion: anger, sadness, neutral) x 2 (expresser gender: male, female) x 2 (attire: formal,
casual) x 2 (context: business, party) between-participant factorial design. Each participant
saw only one image.1

Procedure and Dependent Measures

Participants rated how dominant, submissive, competent, friendly, honest, trustworthy and
of high status the person shown was. Two composite factors were created, dominance (dom-
inance, competence, high status, leadership, and submissiveness reversed scored, α = 0.76)
and affiliation (friendly, honest, and trustworthy, α = 0.81).
Participants further rated the degree to which the person expressed anger, sadness, fear,
happiness, disgust, and neutrality, as well as the perceived authenticity of the expression. All
scales were anchored with 0 (not at all) and 6 (to a large extent). The study was conducted as
a complete between-participants design and each participant saw only one model express-
ing one of the above-mentioned emotions. For compliance with ethical standards and data
availability see Study 1.

Results

Inferences

We first analyzed the effects of emotion expression, attire, expresser gender, and context on
inferences regarding the expressers’ dominance and affiliation. For this, we conducted sepa-
rate 3 (emotion expression: anger, sadness, neutral) x 2 (expresser gender: male, female) x 2
(attire: casual, formal) x 2 (context: business, party) type III analyses of variance using lme4
(Bates et al., 2015), lmerTest (Kuznetsova et al., 2017) and car (Fox & Weisberg, 2019) in
RStudio (RStudio Team, 2019). Contrasts were sum or helmert (emotion) coded.

Dominance

As expected, significant main effects of emotion expression, F(2,825) = 108.95, p <.001, etap2
= 0.21, expresser gender, F(1,825) = 6.28, p =.012, etap2 = 0.01, and attire, F(1,825) = 33.13,
p <.001, etap2= 0.04, emerged, which were partially, and in the case of expresser gender
fully, qualified by an attire x expresser gender, F(1,825) = 4.40, p =.036, etap2= 0.01, an
emotion x context, F(2,825) = 6.25, p =.002, etap2= 0.01, an emotion x attire x expresser
gender, F(2,825) = 4.09, p =.017, etap2= 0.01, and the 4-way interaction, F(2,825) = 7.39,
p =.001, etap2= 0.02. For means and standard errors see Fig. 4. For detailed post-hoc analy-
ses see markdown in the supplementary materials.

1
Because initial testing suggested that some participants found the tuxedos “odd,” the information that the
person was attending a formal vs. informal social event was added for the party condition. At the end of the
experiment, we also asked four additional questions about the attire, which are not part of this report.

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Fig. 4 Means and standard errors for perceived dominance as a function of emotion, attire, expresser
gender and context for Study 2

Specifically, as expected, individuals who showed sadness were perceived as less dom-
inant than individuals who showed anger or neutrality, who did not differ. This finding
is in line with Tiedens’ (2001) findings that anger conveys more dominance than sadness
and with findings that neutral expressions can be perceived as similarly dominant as anger
expressions (Hareli et al., 2009).
As in Study 1, overall, individuals wearing formal dress were perceived as more domi-
nant than those wearing casual dress, however, this difference did not always reach signifi-
cance. Thus, perceived dominance of men showing neutral expressions was not affected by
dress style. Notably, when actors showed sad expressions (with the exception of women
showing sadness in the business context) attire had no effect. As such, sadness, which sig-
nals reduced dominance, counteracted the perception of dominance engendered by formal
attire.
In fact, the effect of emotion (ηp2 = 0.21) was considerably stronger than the effect of
attire (ηp2 = 0.04 versus ηp2 = 0.31 in Study 1). This suggests that emotion as a more proxi-

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Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

mal, situation driven signal was perceived as more informative than the more distal and
stable choice of a specific form of dress.
As regards expresser gender, women wearing formal attire were perceived as more domi-
nant than men, whereas no difference emerged for casual attire. This finding departs from
the finding in Study 1, which suggested that in the business context men in casual dress are
attributed more status and dominance than were women in casual dress. This finding sup-
ports the notion that adding an emotion expression served to reduce participants’ reliance
on both gender and attire related stereotypes when making inferences about others. Notably,
no main effect and only unsystematic interaction effects involving context emerged. Thus,
overall, the effects of formal dress generalized across the two contexts as was found in Study
1.

Affiliation

As expected, a significant main effect of emotion expression emerged, F(2,825) = 108.81,

p <.001, ηp2 = 0.21, such that individuals showing anger were rated as less affiliative
than those showing sadness or neutral expressions, with sadness being slightly less affil-
iative than neutral (for means and standard errors see Fig. 5). A significant emotion by
expresser gender, F(2,825) = 5.21, p =.006, ηp2 = 0.01 and an emotion by context interaction,
F(2,825) = 7.93, p <.001, ηp2 = 0.02, indicated that the size of this difference varied with
context and expresser gender; such that only for women in the business context were neutral
expressions rated as significantly more affiliative than sad expressions, t825 = 2.40, p =.044.
As regards attire, a significant attire by expresser gender interaction, F(1,825) = 10.56,
p =.001, ηp2 = 0.01, emerged, which was qualified by an attire by expresser gender by con-
text interaction, F(1,825) = 4.59, p =.032, ηp2 = 0.01, such that only in the party context a
difference in perceived affiliation as a function of attire emerged. Specifically, women in
formal dress and men in casual dress were perceived as more affiliative. Again, this finding
does not match those reported in Study 1.
Further, an expresser gender by context interaction emerged, such that women were rated
as significantly more affiliative than men in the business context, whereas in the party con-
text no difference was found. This finding matches a trend found in Study 1, where however,
the opposite effect was significant in the party context.
In sum, as in Study 1, the effect of attire on perceptions of dominance was stronger than
on perceptions of affiliation. In the latter case, the effect was more heavily moderated by
expresser gender and to some degree context. Notably, overall, adding emotion expression
to attire led participants to rely more strongly on this information than on stereotype infor-
mation based on gender or attire.

Perceived Emotions

As noted above, there is limited evidence that attire, more specifically, the social status
information conveyed by attire, may influence emotion perception as people expect dif-
ferent emotions as a function of expresser status. Specifically, high status individuals are
considered to be more likely to express anger (Keltner et al., 2003; Tiedens, 2001). Further,
we expected an effect of attire on the perceived authenticity of the expression, based on the

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Fig. 5 Means and standard errors for perceived affiliation as a function of emotion, attire, expresser gen-
der and context for Study 2

notion that high status individuals may be perceived as more carefully managing their emo-
tion expressions in the service of self-presentation goals (Kim et al., 2017).
Separate 3 (emotion expression: anger, sadness, neutral) x 2 (expresser gender: male,
female) x 2 (attire: casual, formal) x 2 (context: business, party) analyses of variance on the
perceived emotion scales were conducted to assess the effects of attire, context, expression
and gender on emotion ratings. As can be expected from the literature, effects of emotion
expression and gender emerged for most ratings. However, as these are well-established in
the literature and of little theoretical interest in the present context, we will only report the
effects involving attire and the effects on perceived authenticity. A full report of all analyses
can be found in the supplementary materials.
Attire. As regards the effects of attire, an emotion expression by dress interaction,
F(2,825) = 3.67, p <.026, etap2 = 0.01, emerged for happiness ratings. Specifically, a sad
expression by a person in formal dress was rated as less happy (M = 1.66; SD = 1.53),

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Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

than the same expression shown by someone wearing casual clothes (M = 2.20; SD = 1.96,
t825 = 2.94, p =.003).
Further, replicating Algoe et al. (2000) finding for status, a main effect of attire emerged
for fear ratings, F(1,825) = 11.44, p =.001, ηp2 = 0.01, such that a person wearing formal
attire was perceived as showing less fear (M = 2.59; SD = 1.74) than a person wearing casual
clothes (M = 32.95; SD = 1.79). Further, for fear a significant 4-way interaction emerged,
F(1,825) = 6.38, p =.002, ηp2 = 0.02, indicating that the effect of attire was not significant for
all conditions. No effects of attire emerged for any of the focal emotions, including anger.

Perceived Authenticity of the Expression

The notion that expressions shown by individuals wearing formal attire would be perceived
as less authentic was supported by a significant main effect of attire, F(1,825) = 11.28,
p =.001, ηp2 = 0.03, such that expressions by individuals in formal dress were perceived as
less authentic (M = 3.39 SD = 1.65) than expressions of individuals wearing casual dress
(M = 3.77; SD = 1.47).
Unexpectedly, emotion expression, F(2,825) = 13.18, p <.001, ηp2 = 0.03, and context,
F(2,825) = 12.40, p <.001, ηp2 = 0.01, as well as their interaction, F(2,825) = 3.58, p =.028,
ηp2 = 0.01, also had a significant effect on perceived authenticity. Specifically, anger expres-
sions in the business context (M = 2.80; SD = 1.69) were perceived as less authentic than the
same expression in a party context (M = 3.59; SD = 1.56). No difference in authenticity as a
function of context emerged for sadness and neutral. It is possible that anger was perceived
as less authentic because anger, unless well justified by preceding events, tends to be a less
socially acceptable emotion, especially in a business context (Kramer & J. Hess, 2002). This
finding is also in line with more recent findings that point to anger expressions in a work
context as inappropriate or an overreaction (Porat & Levy Paluck, 2024).

Discussion

As regards person perception, in both studies attire was found to be more relevant for the
perception of dominance than affiliation. However, overall, in Study 2 emotion effects on
these inferences were much stronger than the effects of attire. Whereas in Study 1 attire
had a strong effect on perceived status and dominance that was not qualified by gender or
context, the situation was more complex in Study 2. Most notably, the effect of attire was
much less evident for individuals who expressed sadness. Sadness signals a lack of domi-
nance (Knutson, 1996), and this signal seems to have overridden the status enhancing effect
of formal attire (with the sole exception of women in the business context) on perceptions
of dominance. In both studies, the effect of attire on perceived affiliation was much less
pronounced and qualified by actor/expresser gender and context.
Overall, the results suggest that when emotion information was available, participants
were more likely to base their inferences on this information rather than on stereotypes
linked to gender or the formality of the clothes a person wears. This matches findings by
Küster et al. (2019) who studied the perception of dominance, competence and empathy
as a function of occupation (signaled by a work uniform) and posture. In this case also,
participants relied strongly on stereotypes informed by the work uniform when this was the

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only information available but used posture as the more proximal nonverbal signal to inform
their ratings when this information was provided.
Küster et al. (2019) argue that postural information on dominance or empathy is used
preferentially because it provides information on the momentary state of mind of the person.
It can be argued that emotion expressions provide an even more direct insight (Hareli &
Hess, 2010). Hareli and Hess (2010) argue that emotion expressions can be used to “reverse
engineer” the perception of a situation that informs the emotional appraisal process (e.g.,
Scherer, 1987) that underlies the emotion experienced in that moment. By contrast, a choice
of attire might have been made hours earlier or, in the case of the business context especially,
be predetermined by external rules. Nonetheless, attire still plays a role for first impressions,
albeit one that is more strongly moderated by gender and context.
Overall, attire had a scant impact on emotion perception and these few effects were lim-
ited to secondary emotion ratings. Notwithstanding, we replicated findings by Algoe et al.
(2000) regarding the perception of fear in high status vs. low status individuals. As regards
perceptions of secondary emotions, Study 2 confirmed, as recent discussions on emotion
recognition posit, that even in well curated sets of standardized emotion expressions peo-
ple perceive other, secondary, emotions, especially when expressions are shown in context
(Hess & Kafetsios, 2022; Kafetsios & Hess, 2023).
Even though no direct effects of attire on the focal emotion ratings emerged, attire was
found to affect the perceived authenticity of emotion expressions such that, as expected,
expressions by individuals wearing formal dress were perceived as less authentic. This is in
line with the notion that observers assume that high status individuals tend to control their
expressions in the service of self-presentation strategies (Hall et al., 2005). Surprisingly,
emotion expression and context influenced ratings of authenticity such that anger expres-
sions were perceived as less authentic in the business compared to the party context. We
speculate that this may be because of a societal shift such that anger is by now considered
inappropriate in a work context (Porat & Levy Paluck, 2024) and hence might have been
unexpected. This notion contrasts findings by Tiedens (2001) to some degree, but the inter-
vening almost quarter century could have wrought a cultural change regarding the infer-
ences drawn from anger shown at work. This may be a question for future research. Finally,
contrary to our expectations, showing real male and female faces did not enhance expresser
gender effects for dominance and affiliation. In fact, if anything, these effects were reduced
when compared to Study 1.

General Discussion

In sum, the present research provides strong evidence that a person’s choice of attire can
serve as a cue when forming first impressions. This impact is lessened, but not obliterated,
by perceivers’ tendency to preferentially base their judgments on emotion expressions.

Limitations

Although the findings of this research paint a convincing picture, a number of limitations
should be mentioned. One limitation of the present research is that we only manipulated
dress style and not aspects like make-up or accessories which usually also vary with the for-

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Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

mality of context. Also, the facial expressions we used were prototypical expression of emo-
tions, which are more intense than real-life expressions usually are (Hess & Hareli, 2016).
When faced with more ambiguous or even mixed facial expressions participants might have
relied more on attire. Importantly, the observed associations between dress and perceived
personality can be expected to be culture specific. The style of dress we used and its clas-
sification were based on Western business and party dress. Although it can be assumed that
aspects of formality and perceived appropriateness play a role for person perception within
most cultural contexts, the specific findings will likely vary.
Also, attire signals more than just a person’s status. Among other things, the way a person
is dressed determines also inferences of a person’s social identity (Hester & Hehman, 2023).
For example, Cox et al. (2016) claim that people tend to view fashionable men as gay. In
turn, social identity is stereotypically linked to certain emotions. For example, people per-
ceive more happiness and less anger in the faces of gay versus straight men (Bjornsdottir
& Rule, 2017).
Finally, in this first investigation on the interaction between attire and emotion expres-
sions we included only three emotions, which have been previously linked to status percep-
tion. Future research should therefore broaden both the manipulation of attire and the range
of emotion expressions. In particular, in light of recent findings linking happiness to higher
status (Bjornsdottir & Rule, 2020), the interaction between attire and the expression of posi-
tive emotions seems of interest.

Conclusion

Traditionally, effects of attire have been neglected in emotion research and vice versa emo-
tion expressions have rarely been considered in studies involving attire. Yet in everyday
life, we usually encounter people who show emotions while wearing clothes and hence the
interaction between these two sources of information about a person is of interest. In this
research, we focused on the choice of formal versus informal dress style as a signal of status.
In Study 1, we found that attire provides a strong cue to status and dominance (and a lesser
but still evident cue for affiliation). However, Study 2 revealed that emotion expression is
a much stronger social signal of character (Hess & Hareli, 2019). Nonetheless, attire was
still found to be influential. As such, the sartorial choices by Mark Zuckerberg and Hillary
Clinton may have served them well.
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at ​h​t​t​p​s​:​/​/​d​o​i​.​o​r​g​
/​1​0​.​1​0​0​7​/​s​1​0​9​1​9​-​0​2​5​-​0​0​4​7​9​-​y​​​​.​​

Author Contributions SH: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, Funding acquisition, Supervision,

Writing - Review & Editing. UH: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing
- Original Draft. YH: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - Review & Editing. SE: Conceptualization,
Methodology, Writing - Review & Editing.

Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

Data Availability The datasets and markdowns are available at osf: ​h​t​t​p​s​:​​/​/​o​s​f​​.​i​o​/​s​h​​v​z​8​/​​?​v​i​e​w​​_​o​n​l​y​​= ​8​3​9​0​9​​9​
5​e​b​​b​d​f​4​8​f​d​9​8​3​2​3​a​a​b​2​6​4​0​3​b​3​2.

13
 Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

Declarations

Competing Interests The authors declare no competing interests.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as
you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons
licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are
included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material.
If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted
by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the
copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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