A is for Attractive: How Dressing Up Can Help You Study

When prepping for midterms, the last thing many students think about is their outfit. A mini skirt won’t make the hours spent at Main go by any faster; it’ll only make the walk home colder. You can’t easily sprawl out on the floor to make flashcards wearing stiff trousers. But if personal testimony rings true, sometimes a little extra confidence can outweigh any temporary discomfort.

In a viral TikTok posted Dec. 9, 2021, Riya Gopal explained her unique study method. 

“I have to be the hottest person in the library in order for me to actively retain information,” she said. “Every single study session, I have my cute little outfit on, I perch my perfect little body onto that seat, I tie my raven god-tier hair into a messy bun and I study for hours on end with the confidence of knowing that I’m literally the sexiest human being alive.”

The comments are flooded with users saying they, too, rely on the strategy Gopal calls “the backbone of [her] academic performance at school.” One user even said that dressing up for the library is how she got her master’s degree.

Gopal is hardly alone in her sentiment. A simple search on TikTok reveals video after video of users following the same “study method.” On August 28, one user posted a video where she spins to show off her outfit, complete with a New Yorker tote bag and an evil eye necklace, for her “hot girl walk to the library.” Another did the same on September 30, sharing her all-black ensemble and pink lip gloss to “force [herself] to romanticize studying.” A third girl shared a video where she dances to Pharrell and Jay-Z’s “Frontin’” in the stacks on December 11, captioned, “me showing up to the library like this” — “this” being a brown mini dress, sheer tights and knee-high boots — “because hot girls pass their finals.”

Gopal said she was unsure of how healthy her study hack is. Lucky for her, science is actually on her side.

Scientists have long searched for a link between appearance and productivity. A 2015 study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that wearing business clothing increased “abstract processing,” pushing wearers towards more creative brainstorming and big-idea solutions. A 2014 study in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General had similar results — subjects who wore suits obtained more profitable deals in a mock negotiation than subjects who wore sweats.

Research in this field has even happened right here at Northwestern. Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky coined the term “enclothed cognition” in research he co-authored while working at the Kellogg School of Management in 2012. The term describes the “systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer's psychological processes.”

Galinsky’s study gave subjects attention tests that compared the performance of subjects in white lab coats to subjects in street clothes. Ultimately, those wearing lab coats performed better. As a next step, the researchers divided new subjects into three groups. Two groups wore lab coats, but one group was told that they were doctor’s coats while the other group was told they were wearing painter’s coats. The third group wore street clothes. In this test, the group that was told they wore doctor’s coats performed the best.

Galinsky’s study not only showed a link between clothing and performance; it went a step further by showing a link between clothing’s perceived meaning and the impact it has on the wearer’s performance. But white lab coats are very different from the concealer and brow gel Gopal uses as motivation. What is the “meaning” one must ascribe to attractiveness to attain maximum academic performance?

Weinberg first-year Maddy Gallagher thinks confidence may be that meaning. She tested the theory of enclothed cognition during her midterm exams this year.

“Last quarter, I dressed really lazy for my exams because I thought being comfortable would make me perform better, but it ended up not really working out for me,” Gallagher says. “So this quarter, I decided to try something different and dressed up for one of my midterms. I put on some makeup and wore clothes that made me feel confident, and I ended up getting an A.”

The logic sounds simple: if everyone were to dress to impress on test day, the class average would ultimately increase. But recent research suggests otherwise.

In an article for The Cut, author Cari Romm highlights a 2014 Harvard Business School study that found nonconformity is actually the key to boosting performance. In the study, college students were asked to compare the skills of two professors, one in a suit with a clean shave and the other in a T-shirt with a beard. The students rated the casually dressed professor better, but only when the descriptions they were given mentioned that both professors worked at prestigious universities with strict dress codes.

The scientific solution seems less clear than Gopal made it out to be. Dressing up does have a material impact on psychological processes and academic performance, but only when you are the odd one out. So wear those stilettos to Mudd, but only if you know your study group is rocking snow boots.