If a women dresses in masculine clothes, she’s more likely to be hired.  A teaching assistant who dresses up will be taken more seriously than one who dresses down.  The clothes make the woman and the man.  We’ve known these things intuitively for a long time, and studies have proved them.  Now there’s a study that suggests that what we wear affects our own internal thought processes. 

According to researchers Adam and Galinsky from Northwestern University, subjects who put on a doctor’s white lab coat thought more clearly and had better sustained attention than those who did not – and even than those who looked at a lab coat before taking a series of tests.  So putting on a lab coat makes you smarter.

That raises the question.  Does dressing well make it possible for you to give a better speech?

Anecdotally, we know this to be true.   No doubt people have told you for years to ‘dress for success’.  You naturally dress in your best for a job interview, or an important meeting.  It makes you feel better, and it’s a signal to others that you are taking the event seriously. 

We always tell clients to buy a suit or a dress that makes them feel like a million bucks when they’re giving an important speech.  If you feel great, you stand in a way that telegraphs that feeling.  And the audience picks that feeling up.  The audience gets your confidence.  You give a better speech, and the audience has a better experience. 

But now we have reason to suspect that, if dressing in a white lab coat makes you smarter, other high-status clothing choices will have a similar effect.  That’s something to think about when you get ready to give that important talk.  Are you dressed for success?  Are you dressed to get the most out of your brain?