Tania Niavarani

Aims

This study explores how people’s clothing preferences are shaped by repeated exposure, personality, and social influences. Specifically, it assesses whether seeing the same item of clothing numerous times could make people like it more. It also assesses whether factors such as gender, age, personality, and conformity tendencies play a role in people’s clothing preferences.

Why is this important?

Clothing is an expression of identity. It reflects taste and social belonging. Previous research demonstrates that repeated exposure can influence preference in other contexts. For example, people often enjoy songs more after listening multiple times. Likewise, individuals also prefer adverts that they have seen before. However, there is limited research whether people like clothing garments more after repetitive observation, revealing a literature gap. Exploring the mere exposure effect on clothing can explain how fashion trends spread and provide insight for marketers to influence purchasing decisions via strategic campaigns.

Methods

An online experiment was conducted with 160 participants. They were shown images of different clothing articles. In particular, boilersuits and coats were presented a different number of times. Participants rated their preference towards items of clothing before and after being presented with these pictures. They also completed a series of questions on personality, conformity, age, and gender, to see if these factors also impacted their clothing preferences.

Findings

This study found that observing an item of clothing repeatedly did not make people like it more. Unlike music, this effect is not as straightforward in clothing preferences. However, personality and social factors did play a role. More extraverted people, and those who scored higher in conformity, liked coats more after repeated exposure. However, this did not occur with boilersuits. In terms of social factors, men and women differed in how much they liked coats, but this was not the case in boilersuits. There was also no difference in preference based on age.

Impact of this project

These findings show that clothing preference is complex and cannot be shaped by exposure alone. Instead, it is impacted by a mix of individual personality traits and social factors, as well as the type of clothing too. This knowledge aids both marketers and fashion designers as it highlights areas of improvement when trying to get people to buy clothes. For researchers, it also poses queries about how trends spread. In the future, it would be interesting to explore this effect further in a real word setting, where people encounter fashion trends more naturally.