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1989 8: 1Clothing and Textiles Research JournalSharron J. Lennon and Leslie L. Davis

Clothing and Human Behavior from a Social Cognitive Framework Part II: The Stages of Social Cognition  

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Clothing and Human Behaviorfrom a Social Cognitive Framework

Part II: The Stages of Social CognitionSharron J. Lennon

Leslie L. Davis

Authors’ Addresses: Sharron J. Lennon, Department of ApparelMerchandising, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405; andLeslie L. Davis, Department of Apparel, Interiors & Merchandising,Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331

Abstract

This paper represents Part II in a two-part paper which integrates theory and research in social cognition withresearch in clothing and human behavior. Part II addresses the three stages of social cognition (pre-processing,processing, and post-processing) and factors which affect each of these three stages. Existing research in clothingand human behavior is interpreted within this framework and suggestions are made for future research.

Understanding the cognitive processes which people usewhen they make judgments about other people is a goal ofsocial cognition research. Characterizing social cognition byits stages: pre-processing, processing, and post-processing,together with the factors which influence each of the stages,offers a framework which can aid the study and

understanding of social cognitive processes.This paper uses the framework of the stages of social

cognition to integrate theory and research in social cognitivepsychology with research in clothing and human behavior.This is the second part of a two-part paper which

investigates the effects of appearance on the impressionsformed by, judgments made of, and behavioral responses ofothers from the perspective of social cognition. Part I

addressed social perception, categorization, attribution

theory, and impression formation. Part II will address socialcognition from the perspective of pre-processing, processing,and post-processing factors which influence social cognitiveactivities. An attempt will be made throughout to organizeand explain research and also to suggest further research inclothing and human behavior from a social cognitionperspective.

Stages of Social Cognition

Pre-Processing Factors .

The stages of social cognition can be divided into pre-processing factors, processing factors, and post-processing

factors. Pre-processing factors are those which operate evenbefore individuals are exposed to information (Fiske &

Taylor, 1984). Such factors work prior to informationavailability and act to direct attention and/or to bias theinterpretation of that information. Examples of pre-

processing factors include task set, priming, perspective,salience, contextual factors in social cognition, and

information-gathering strategies.Task set. Task set (or task purpose) refers to the notion

that a person’s task assignment acts to guide information-seeking behavior (Fiske & Taylor, 1984, pp. 224-225). Inan experiment in which subjects were told either that theywere to communicate (send) information to others or thatthey were going to receive communications from othersabout a job applicant (Zajonc, 1960), the importance of taskset was revealed. People intending to send informationdescribed the potential job applicant in a manner which wassignificantly more differentiated, complex, unified, and

organized than did the people who intended to receive theinformation. This and other research (for example,Hamilton, Katz, & Leirer, 1980) shows that the goalinduced by a task set can have a significant impact on howsocial information is encoded.

In the clothing and human behavior area it is plausible thattask set could influence judgments, for example, if subjects’tasks were to evaluate a stimulus person as a potentialemployee or potential date. While a mini-skirted femalemight be judged as desirable as a date, she might well bejudged as undesirable as an employee. Research investigat-ing the effects of dress similarity on attraction (Buckley &

Roach, 1981 ) has some bearing on this issue. Subjects wereasked to judge the (1) &dquo;liking&dquo; for and (2) &dquo;working with&dquo; astimulus stranger. These researchers found that dress

similarity affected judgments of &dquo;liking,&dquo; but not &dquo;working

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with,&dquo; the stimulus stranger. Clearly task set affects howclothing is interpreted.

Priming. A second pre-processing factor is priming, &dquo;thefact that recently and frequently activated ideas come tomind more easily than ideas that have not been activated&dquo;(Fiske & Taylor, 1984, p. 231). Priming can be used tomake a category more accessible. According to Bruner(1957) the effects of category accessibility are that (1) lessinput is needed for something to be identified as a categorymember, (2) the more accessible a category is the morethings will be seen as category members, and (3) categoriesthat provide an equally good or better fit will be masked.When one’s own category systems are imposed on the realworld, it is possible to misinterpret or &dquo;misperceive&dquo; things.With people as the objects of cognitions the information anindividual interprets may be ambiguous. This is why primingis important. If a certain category has recently been primed,that category is likely to be used in interpreting otherambiguous stimuli. Priming effects have been found instudies in which ambiguous behaviors were identified inaccord with previous primes (Higgins, Rholes, & Jones,1977; Srull & Wyer, 1980). In clothing research primingeffects have been found to affect perceptions of apparelforms (DeLong, 1977). DeLong found that, after 40 hours ofexposure to and analysis of apparel forms, observersincreased in their descriptions of apparel in relation to thetotal form. To summarize, priming, a pre-processing factorin cognition, is important in determining how cues will beinterpreted because it affects categorization and this

interpretation serves to guide future behavior.Perspective. Perspective or point of view of the perceiver

is a third pre-processing factor. Perspective is similar to taskset or task purpose in that it may affect the way in which

incoming information is organized. In empirical studies

people’s memories tend to be biased toward perspective-consistent information (Anderson & Pichert, 1978; Zadny& Gerald, 1974). In these studies the perspective or point ofview was induced by the researcher. In real life perspectivescan be induced by others but also people have their ownperspectives with which to interpret behavior (Monson &

Hesley, 1982). Thus perspective is important not onlybecause it influences the way in which the behavior of others

and other ambiguous social cues are interpreted but alsobecause this interpretation will guide a person’s futurebehavior toward others.

Clothing research has demonstrated that impressions formedof individuals in different clothing styles is, in part, affected bythe perceiver’s &dquo;framework of interpretation&dquo; (Noesjirwan &

Crawford, 1982). This framework of interpretation involves thecultural and social norms and values adopted by an individualand appears to influence the specific meanings attributed tocertain clothing styles by the individual. For example, Littrelland Berger (1985-86) found that differences in the perspectivesof school counselors and law enforcement officers affected their

perceptions of male adolescent clients who were either well-groomed or poorly groomed. Law enforcement officers notedmore cues and based their inferences on more specificappearance cues than did the school counselors. In addition,individuals from each occupation drew inferences which wereconsistent with their occupational perspective.

Salience. Salience is a fourth type of pre-processingfactor. Task set, priming, and perspective are all factorswhich occur before information is received, while salience ofinformation is a factor that &dquo;arrives with&dquo; the information.Salience is a property of a stimulus that often attracts

attention (Fiske & Taylor, 1984, p. 185). Social salience,the salience of a social object, may be attributed to the factthat the person in question is salient relative to the per-ceiver’s (1) immediate context (McArthur & Ginsberg,1981; McArthur & Post, 1977; Wolman & Frank, 1975),(2) prior knowledge or expectations (Jones & McGillis,1976; Langer, Taylor, Fiske, & Chanowitz, 1976), or (3)goals (Taylor, 1975; Taylor & Fiske, 1975). Salienceeffects include stereotyping (Wolman & Frank, 1975) andextreme evaluations (McArthur & Solomon, 1978). Makingcertain information salient to people can change their ideasabout themselves as well (Salancik & Conway, 1975).Salience acts to draw attention to some aspect of a socialobject (Fiske & Taylor, 1984, p. 186) and this attention mayfunction to make related categories more accessible in

perception. Category accessibility affects how peopleinterpret ambiguous social cues (Bruner, 1957) such as thebehavior of others and that interpretation guides people’sfuture behaviors. One means by which the salience of thesocial object is increased is through the use of attire whichdraws attention to the person (Miller, 1982) or to physicaldisabilities of the person (Wingate, Kaiser, & Freeman,1985-86). Salience of specific appearance cues (includingclothing) has also been found to affect impression formation(Lennon & Miller, 1984).

Context. A fifth factor affecting social cognition prior toinformation processing is the context in which theobservation occurs. An individual’s own idiosyncraticinterpretation (internal context) of a situation may lead oneto misinterpret the behavior and motives of others and maylead to errors of inference (Ross, Greene, & House, 1977).One’s own emotional state can also affect one’s judgments ofothers. Schiffenbauer (1974) showed that the emotionalstate of judges influenced their judgments of others’emotional states. The context can also be externallyprovided. Research in evaluation of personality trait

adjectives (Anderson & Lampel, 1965; Wyer, 1974)generally finds that evaluations of trait descriptive adjectivesincrease with the value of the favorableness of the

accompanying text adjectives. Research in the area of

clothing and behavior (Workman, 1984-85) found that anensemble which was not judged inappropriate to wear for aninterview for groundskeeper was judged as inappropriate towear for an interview for orientation advisor. Thus theevaluation of the inappropriateness of the ensemble wasbased on the context of the interview. To summarize thecontext within which information is presented can have apronounced effect on how the information is interpreted,coded, and processed.Information gathering strategies. A final pre-processing

factor deals with information-gathering strategies. Regard-less of how people form impressions of others, they arerapidly able to construct hypotheses concerning another’spersonality (Fiske & Taylor, 1984, p. 385). A body ofliterature supports the notion that people tend to behave

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toward others in ways which will confirm their hypothesesabout those others (Snyder, Campbell, & Preston, 1982;Snyder & Swann, 1978). Thus people may actually employinformation-gathering strategies which act preferentially tosupport their views of others (Snyder & Gangestad, 1981).Sometimes a perceiver’s confirmatory hypothesis testingprocess can filter down to the target person and alter the

target person’s behavior in the direction of the hypothesis.Then a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1957, p. 423) issaid to have occurred. In this case an essentially erroneoushypothesis elicits behaviors which act to confirm the false

hypothesis. Thus in this instance an information-gatheringstrategy not only affects how people will interpret another’sbehavior, but it also affects how the target person will

ultimately behave (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 1977).Although confirmatory hypothesis testing has been widelydemonstrated, some boundary conditions to the effect havebeen delineated. For example, Hilton and Darley (1985)found that expectancy confirmation occurs only when per-ceivers with expectancies interact with naive target persons.When target persons were told that the perceiver held anexpectancy about them, they were able to overcome theexpectancy. Fortunately, then, people are not &dquo;trapped inperpetual confirmation&dquo; (Trope & Bassok, 1982) of theirhypotheses as a function of biased information-gatheringstrategies. Clearly the manner in which people search forinformation can have a profound influence on how thatinformation is interpreted.Although information-gathering strategies have not been

studied as a function of the stimulus person’s clothing, recentresearch can be interpreted in this light (Williams & Behling,1986). This study examined students’ and teachers’

perceptions of intelligence, expected behavior, and potentialacademic achievement as a function of students’ clothing.Results indicated that students are perceived differently bytheir peers and teachers with respect to expected behaviorand expected academic performance. This is exactly thesituation in which a self-fulfiling prophecy is likely to occur:i.e., the target person is naive and the person with the

expectation is in authority (Hilton & Darley, 1985). Thepossible role of clothing in the perpetuation of a self-fulfillingprophecy is one which merits further study.

Processing FactorsThe second major stage of social cognition is the actual

processing of social information. During this processing anyone or several of the following factors can come into play:cognitive schemata, individual differences in processingsocial information, the role of the self, processing below thelevel of awareness, and person memory.

Cognitive schemata. The notion of a schema was firstproposed by Bartlett ( 1932) to explain how people interpretprose passages. He viewed schemata as mental structuresinto which new information is incorporated. Although theseideas received little attention for 35 years, today theirimportance has been recognized (Lachman, Lachman, &

Butterfield, 1979, p. 453). A schema is a cognitive structureof organized prior knowledge abstracted from one’s

experiences (Fiske & Taylor, 1984, p. 140). These guide theprocessing of new information (Johnson, Doll, Bransford, &

Lapinski, 1974; Owens, Bower, & Black, 1979) and theretrieval of stored information (Anderson & Pichert, 1978,Exp.1; Bransford & Franks, 1971; Snyder & Uranowitz,1978). Schemata are shared by people of the same culture(Bartlett, 1932; Hoffinan, Lau, & Johnson, 1986). In

general, schema theory posits four operations: selection-aperceptual process which filters incoming stimuli; abstrac-don-a process which stores the meaning of the incominginformation in memory while losing its surface form;interpretation-an inferential process which aids compre-hension, generates relevant prior knowledge, and can resultin embellishment; and integration-a process which uses theresults of the first three processes in order to form a memoryrepresentation (Alba & Hasher, 1983).

In the clothing literature the relevance of perceptualschema is highlighted in a series of studies by DeLong andher colleagues which examined how individuals perceiveand evaluate apparel products (DeLong & Larntz, 1980;DeLong, Minshall, & Lamtz, 1986; DeLong, Salusso-

Deonier, & Larntz, 1981). These studies indicate thatindividuals use a generalized schema consisting of propertieswhich define the apparel product when evaluating this

product. Continuation of research in this area is necessary tounderstand better the processing strategies used by people inevaluating not only specific apparel products themselves butalso target persons wearing the apparel.

Since the way in which one interprets information is

dependent upon one’s existing schemata, it is clear thatindividual differences are important in this context and canaffect the manner in which people process social

information. One way in which people differ in the

processing of social information is in the extent to whichthey attend to social stimuli. A variety of scales have beendeveloped to measure these differences. For example,attention to the self is measured by the Self-ConsciousnessScale (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975), attention to theenvironment in general as controlled or controlling ismeasured by the Assessment of Locus of Control (Rotter,1966, 1971), and attention to social situations is measuredby the Self-Monitoring Scale (Snyder, 1974). Theseindividual differences in attention to social stimuli have beenshown to affect a variety of responses such as selection andstructure of incoming stimuli (Wolk & DuCette, 1974),affective reactions (Fenigstein, 1979), sensitivity to

situational and interpersonal influences on self-presentationin a social conformity context (Snyder & Monson, 1975),and attitudes toward visual stimuli such as clothing (Davis,1984; Davis & Lennon, 1985; Miller, Davis, & Rowold,1982; Solomon & Schopler, 1982).Individual differences. Before people can attend to social

stimuli, however, the stimuli must be selected for processing.Recently researchers have argued that individuals selec-tively screen social stimuli for further processing (Bargh &

Pratto, 1986). These researchers found that stimulus

properties relevant to an individual’s own accessibleconstructs (chronic accessibility) guide the selection ofstimuli for further processing and that this process is

automatic, unintentional, and constant. Individual differ-ences in chronic construct accessibility have also beenshown to affect subjective impressions and recall of others

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(Higgins, King, & Mavin, 1982). It seems clear from theseresults that if two perceivers have different chronicallyaccessible constructs, their selection of information about,impressions of, and recollections of the same social objectwill be very different. These differences are bound to affect

interpersonal relations and could lead to conflict and

disagreement.Self and social cognition. Based on these arguments it is

apparent that one’s judgment of social objects reflects thepoint of view of the self. In other words, cognitions regardingthe social world are filtered through the self (Cacioppo,Petty, & Sidera, 1982). People use themselves as a frame ofreference when evaluating social information (Smith, 1983),and self-knowledge and self-evaluations are important inperceiving other people (Kuiper & Derry, 1981, p. 217;Lemon & Warren, 1974). In general, research has revealedthat the self is a potent encoding device (Rogers, Kuiper, &

Kirker, 1977) and that information relevant to the self is (1)more easily and quickly accessed (Ross & Sicoly, 1979), (2)more complex (Linville, 1982), and (3) more emotionallycharged (Zajonc, 1980) than information about others. Tosummarize, there seems to be a clear connection between theself and social cognition. However, the self is more specialthan any other social object and information processed withrespect to the self is processed more deeply than informationabout others.

Clothes are related to the concept of self (Kaiser, 1985, p.99; Sontag & Schlater, 1982; Stone, 1962). It seems

reasonable then that judgments of others, particularlyregarding clothing, might reflect the point of view of the selfas measured by various clothing-related instruments. Onesuch instrument, clothing interest, may be defined as the&dquo;attitudes and beliefs about clothing, the knowledge of andattention paid to clothing, [and] the concern and curiosity aperson has about his/her own clothing and that of others&dquo;(Gurel, 1974, p. 12). Since people use themselves as framesof reference when evaluating social information (Smith,1983), it seems reasonable that they might use their ownlevel of clothing interest as a guide when judging clothedstrangers. In fact, recent clothing research shows that anindividual’s level of clothing interest affects judgments ofpersonal traits of a clothed stranger (Paek, 1986).

It might be reasonable to expect that other clothing-related dependent variables may also be used as a frame-work by individuals when making judgments about clothedstrangers. Another clothing measure, Proximity of Clothingto Self (Sontag & Schlater, 1982), may be potentially usefulin this regard. This measure was developed to tap thepsychological closeness of clothing to self. Affectiveevaluation of clothing and affective evaluation of self weremeasured separately and correlated. Individuals high inproximity of clothing to self had substantially highercorrelations than those low in proximity of clothing to self.Although the respondents did not make judgments regardingother people, it seems reasonable based on the research justreviewed that a person’s level of proximity of clothing to selfmight be used as a frame of reference when evaluating otherpeople’s clothing behavior or when making judgments ofothers based upon their clothing behavior. This is an area forpotential future research.

Processing below the level of awareness. It has been

argued that there are differences between people withrespect to their chronically accessible categories, that

category accessibility affects stimulus selection, and thatthis selection occurs below conscious awareness (Bargh,1982; Bargh & Pratto, 1986). There is also evidence thatother stimuli, not representing chronically accessible

categories, can affect the behavior of individuals below thelevel of awareness (Bargh & Pietromonaco, 1982; Corteen& Wood, 1972). Both of these findings show that, individualdifferences aside, a stimulus people are not consciouslyaware of and cannot remember later on nonetheless can beshown to have an effect on behavior, not only individuallybut also reliably across a group. Clothing may be just such astimulus. Definitive research is needed to establish

empirically it as such.Stimuli can be automatically selected for processing

based on either chronic or temporary accessibility withoutintent and without conscious awareness. Recently research-ers (Winter, Uleman, & Cunniff, 1985) have found thatpeople make trait inferences automatically from behavioraldescriptions, without intention and with little awareness.This supports the findings of others (Kraut & Lewis, 1982;Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) who have argued that people lackawareness of and are inaccurate at reporting what influencesthem. Thus these studies (Bargh & Pietromonaco, 1982;Corteen & Wood, 1972; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Winter etal., 1985) indicate that people may be unaware of (1) astimulus which has affected them, (2) the fact that they haveresponded to the stimulus, and (3) the relationship betweenthe stimulus and the response. Although many studies haveshown that clothing affects judgments, research is needed toinvestigate whether or not people are unaware of ( 1 ) clothingas a stimulus which has affected them, (2) the fact that theyhave responded to clothing as a stimulus, and (3) therelationship between clothing and their responses.Person memory. Person memory refers to the cognitive

representations of persons. Person memory is importantduring pre-processing, processing, and post-processing ofperson information. It has been argued that task purpose andthe context within which information is presented are twopre-processing factors which affect how social information isinterpreted. Task purpose also importantly affects personmemory (Fiske & Cox, 1979; Hamilton et al., 1980).Person memory is also affected by inducing subjects to takethe perspective or role of the person (Fiske, Taylor, Etcoff,& Laufer, 1979; Owens et al., 1979) and by the contextwithin which information is presented (Cohen, 1981).Much has been written regarding the structure and

contents of person memory. (See chapter three of Wyer &

Carlston, 1979, for one view.) For example, a free responseformat has been used by Fiske and Cox (1979) to determinethe kinds of social cues that are stored and used by people intheir descriptions of others. These authors found that peoplementioned appearance-related cues (including clothing) first,then trait information, and finally behavioral sequences.Thus, at least in a recall format people use appearance cues(including clothing) first when describing other people.Apparently clothing is important in this context andwarrants further investigation.

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With this exception (Fiske & Cox, 1979) most personmemory research ignores appearance (Fiske & Taylor,1984, p. 220) and thus little is known about memory for

appearances, other than memory for people’s faces whichhas been found to be very accurate (Bower, 1970; Freides,1974). Although clothing researchers have not studiedperson memory as a function of the stimulus person’sclothing, a few have used recall measures: i.e., visual recallof dress design (Baer, 1979), recall of specific clothing items(Perry, Schutz, & Rucker, 1983), and recall on the basis ofclothing (Miller, 1982). Research in clothing and humanbehavior reflects the fact that most person memory research

ignores appearance. Memory for people as a function oftheir clothing is an area of research as yet untapped byresearchers.

’

Post-Processing FactorsPost-processing factors such as attitude change, mood,

and context are those that are introduced subsequent toencoding and storage. These factors may influence judg-ments, cognitions, attitudes, and recall.Attitude change. Attitude change can act as a post-

processing factor which influences recall of past attitudesand behaviors. Research (Bem & McConnell, 1970; Ross,McFarland, & Fletcher, 1981) shows that when people areasked to recall past behaviors following an attitude changeattempt they inaccurately recall their past behaviors as beingcongruent with their current attitudes. Along a somewhatsimilar vein (Salancik & Conway, 1975) subjects’ currentattitudes were manipulated by making some aspect of theirpast behavior salient. This salience led to the biased recall ofcertain past behaviors which then influenced current at-titudes. In the general clothing area this type of manipula-tion might be successful if a person’s past clothing-relatedbehavior were made salient. For example, if people who wereaverage in their degree of fashionableness were asked torespond to the question &dquo;Do you frequently dress fashion-ably ?&dquo; they would probably respond negatively. However, ifthey were asked &dquo;Do you occasionally dress fashionably?&dquo;they could probably respond positively. Those who respondedpositively might then &dquo;recall&dquo; more past &dquo;fashionable&dquo;behaviors than those who responded negatively.

Context. The context present at retrieval is a post-processing factor which affects retrieval in the context of afree recall (Eich, 1980) memory task. In general, people’sresponses on free recall tasks are better when there exists a

congruity of context at encoding and retrieval (Eich,Weingartner, Stillman, & Gillin, 1975; Godden &

Baddeley, 1975; Petersen, 1979).Mood. Mood has been successfully manipulated (Bower,

1981 ) to vary context at retrieval. When a positive mood isinduced, recall and judgment are improved (Isen, Shalker,Clark, & Karp, 1978) and congruity of mood at encodingand retrieval seems sometimes to improve recall (Bower,1981). Thus mood can act as an effective post-processingfactor. Although mood has recently been studied in theclothing literature (Kwon, 1987), it was not in the context ofa post-processing factor.Post-input cuing. Another type of post-processing factor

which affects recall is post-input cuing. Trait inferences have

been found to be effective as post-input cues (Carlston,1980; Winter et al., 1985). Carlston (1980) induced peopleto make either positive or negative judgments as a function ofthe same information. Impressions and final recall werefound to be a function of the induced judgments. Thus theinduced judgment served as a type of implicit retrieval cue.The same clothed stimulus could be used to induce both

positive and negative judgments by varying the contextwithin which the stimulus is perceived. Then people’simpressions of the stimulus could be measured to determinewhether or not they were a function of the induced

judgment.Other researchers (Winter et al., 1985) have found that

cues consisting of traits implied by, but not presented in, theoriginal information to subjects acted as effective retrievalcues. Together these articles imply that trait inferences

(whether induced or automatic) which occur after stimuluspresentation are relied upon to make further related

judgments. Thus these trait inferences serve as effectiveimplicit and explicit recall cues. Although clothingresearchers have not used conveyed trait inferences as post-input cues, it could easily be done. Investigators might tryusing verbal descriptions of a stimulus stranger’s appearanceto convey certain traits and then supplying those traits in acued recall format to see if the traits would act as effectiveretrieval cues. Similarly, the same clothed stimulus might beused to induce judgments of formality or masculinity. Theseinduced judgments could then be used as post-inputcues.

Intervening cognitions. A fmal post-processing factorconcerns cognitions (attributions, judgments, thoughts,expectations) that intervene after information is encodedand stored and that mediate subsequent behavior. Some-times behavior and cognitions are consistent (Fazio &

Zanna, 1981) and sometimes they are inconsistent (Snyder& Swann, 1976). When people make predictions about theirbehavior, these predictions are very different from the actualbehavior of a control group who had made no predictions( Sherman, 1980). However, once predictions were made,the people who made the predictions later acted in

accordance. Children have also been shown to behave in thesame manner (Fazio, 1981). Both these studies reveal

strong effects on subsequent behavior of pre-behavioralcognitive work.

Expectations for success or failure have also been shownto influence subsequent behavior. In a now classic studyRosenthal and Jacobson (1968) showed that teacher

expectations for children’s improved academic behavioractually caused such an improvement. One’s own expec-tancies can also affect one’s future behavior. Expectanciesfor failure can lead to failure but in small doses can make

subjects work harder and be motivated to avoid failure(Sherman, Skov, Hervitz, & Stock, 1981), and can leadpeople to self-handicap (Berglas & Jones, 1978). Thus bothsuccess and failure expectations mediate subsequentbehavior.

Self-perceptions can mediate later behavior by causingpeople to arrive at certain conclusions about themselves.When people comply with a small request, they are muchmore likely than a control group to perform a higher cost task

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later (Freedman & Fraser, 1966), presumably because theimplicit helpful label then influences their willingness tocomply with the second task. Research shows (Kraut, 1973)that explicitly provided labels also influence subsequentbehavior. For example, clothing behavior has beeninfluenced by explicitly provided labels. Workman (1987)found that a random labeling of individuals as fashionable orunfashionable affected subsequent clothing selection. Boththese studies show that self-perceptions made salient bylabeling behaviors actually can serve to mediate laterbehavior. In Part I it was argued that people may bestereotyped as a function of their clothing and appearance.Perhaps stereotypic labels applied as a result of an

individual’s clothing and appearance may lead to self-

perceptions which may serve to mediate the individual’slater behavior. This is an area which warrants further

investigation.

Conclusions

The three stages of social cognition have been discussed,together with some of the variables which affect them.

Existing research in clothing and human behavior has beeninterpreted within this framework. All of the pre-processingfactors reviewed were shown to have implications forresearch in clothing and human behavior. Of the processing

factors discussed, individual differences, the role of the self,and cognitive schemata were shown to be directly related toexisting clothing research. There has been no clothingresearch designed within the framework of post-processingfactors. However, research on the effects of labeling(Workman, 1987) can be interpreted as an example of anintervening cognition which affects later clothing-relatedbehavior. The use of post-input cues following a clothingmanipulation and other possible areas for future researchhave been suggested within this framework. With somenotable exceptions (Freeman, Kaiser, & Wingate, 1985-86;Kaiser, 1984-85; Wingate, et al., 1985-86) the area ofsocial cognition offers a relatively untapped wealth ofpotential research hypotheses and guidance for clothing andhuman behavior researchers.

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