It’s always fun for me to watch people trying on costumes for Halloween.  Their body language changes, their demeanor shifts, and some sort of alter ego emerges.  It got me thinking about our clothes and the influence it has on us. Fun fact, as it turns out, there is a developing psychology all about this! 

“Embodied cognition” is the study of how our thought processes are based on our physical experiences that set off abstract processes.  For example, research shows that washing your hands is associated with a sense of moral purity and ethical judgments. People rate others personally warmer  if they hold a hot drink in their hand, and colder if they hold an iced drink. And if you carry a heavy clipboard, you will feel more important! A group of researchers took this a step further to investigate “enclothed cognition,”looking at the “systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer’s psychological processes.”  In other words, what do the clothes you wear say to you, not about you, and how this influences how you behave. 

Researchers at Northwestern University did a series of experiments having subjects wear either a doctors coat, an artists smock, or street clothes.  Despite the fact that the doctor’s coat and the artist’s smock were actually absolutely identical, the people wearing what they believed was the doctor’s coat performed much better on  tasks and were more careful and attentive. Just looking at the doctor’s coat had no effect on performance, it was only when subjects had it on did it change their outcomes. The researchers conclude that “the influence of clothes depends both on wearing the clothing and the meaning it invokes in their psychological schema.”  Doctors are generally thought to be highly intelligent, precise, and scientific thinkers, while artists are generally thought to be free thinking creative types. People ascribed a symbolic meaning to an article of clothing and while wearing it, took on the character strength they perceived.  

Enclothed cognition gives scientific proof to the idea that you should dress not how you feel, but how you want to feel.  The clothes you choose are sending messages to those around you, but also to yourself! When you dress a certain way, it does influence your internal self.  When you feel low or nervous about a job at hand, dressing up can change things. Clothes influence the body and the brain, putting us in a state of expectation that alters how we approach and interact with our world, and in turn, how the world responds to us.  We have uniforms of all types in our lives, beyond what we wear to work. What we wear to the grocery store, to work out in, or on a date may have more influence than we realize in how we things go for us.  

So this Halloween have some fun!  Try on an outfit very different from your comfortable self.  How does it make you feel? How does it affect how you hold your body posture? Your attitude?  Does it make you feel more powerful or more attractive? Bolder or sillier? Then imagine how you might use this in what you choose to wear each morning.   This new research shows it to be at least somewhat true, that clothes makes the man (or woman)! 

After writing in my last post about the positive shift in attitude I feel when I use the word I “get” to versus I “have” to, I began to think about another word change.  I notice I also experience the same tightness in my body that happens when I say “have” whenever I use the word “should.”  I also realize how often I say it! So this week, as a follow up, I’ll spend some words on this word.

Most of us have heard the phrase “You’re shoulding all over yourself.”  We recognize that when we use the word should it invokes a little burst of guilt.  Hence the tightness. So I started reframing that each time I use the word ‘should” I’m actually identifying an ambivalence.  I want to have cake and ice cream for dinner, but I also know its healthier to eat the chicken. Should alerts us that we want something else rather than what we feel is the “right” thing to do.  I should do the dishes, but I want to watch This Is Us.  I should call the insurance guy, but I don’t want to talk to him.  

Obviously, it’s not a good idea to do whatever we want.  Shoulds impose reason and reflect important internalized messages of past learning that are necessary.  But should has a childlike quality; like when I was a little girl and for my own well being had to do what my parents and teachers wanted.  Should makes me feel young and beholden to some authority and therefore makes me feel that my desires are in some way bad. Inevitably, it makes me a bit rebellious.  Ironically then, the more I feel like I should do something, the less likely I am to do it. And then the more I put it off, the more resentful I am about it.

So the antidote?  I have been playing around with replacing I “should” with I “ choose.”  It helps me own whatever I should do as a choice that I, as my adult self, am making, rather than being guilted to please someone else.  Whenever I hear a should, I’m trying to think it of it as information about my own ambivalence. It helps me explore the basis for the should as well.  Sometimes shoulds are based on things that are good for me, and sometimes not. Often, my shoulds come from my desire to please other people. I should volunteer for the fundraiser, I should apologize, or I should say yes to something.  I do it because I want approval rather then really what’s true for me.  

Again, being an adult often requires doing things we don’t want to do.  But it also allows us to go off the rails once in a while because we’ve achieved the maturity to get back on track.  It’s ultimately all about weighing pros and cons and making a choice, then taking responsibility for the choice. Saying I choose rather than I should affirms my behavior as a decision rather than an imposed activity.  I’m also finding that when I say I “should” do something, it leaves it in the future. When I change it to I choose to do it, it brings it into the now. It also helps me prioritize. Rather than having a list of shoulds building up, I can evaluate what’s most important to me at any given time.  Yes, I should be cleaning the house, but right now, writing my blog is more important to me. Or, yes, having the cake and ice cream for dinner would be fun, but keeping my sugar in balance is more important to me. And sometimes, in switching from I “should” to I “choose,” we actually give ourselves permission to compromise.  

So here’s my choice:  After I write this I’ll call the insurance guy, have a piece of the leftover chicken for dinner, do the dishes, and relax with the slice of cake while I watch my recorded episode of This Is Us.  Hmmmm what do you know.  Being an adult isn’t all that bad!