Wearing Black Clothes: The Impact of Offenders' and Suspects' Clothing on Impression Formation
✍ Scribed by Aldert Vrij
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 360 KB
- Volume
- 11
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0888-4080
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✦ Synopsis
People usually associate the colour black with evil, aggression and badness. It was hypothesized that this association would influence people's perception, i.e. it was expected that offenders and suspects who wore black clothes would be seen as more aggressive than those who wore light-coloured clothes. In two experiments the colour of clothing of offenders and suspects was manipulated and the effect of this manipulation on observers' perception was investigated. The results indicated strong support for the hypothesis. The practical implications of the findings are discussed.
The colour black often has negative associations: people who are in mourning wear black clothes; a disastrous period in history is called a black period'; somebody who is excluded from a certain activity is blacklisted'; blackmailing' is an illegal way of earning money; a secret market is called a black market'; black humour' is gloomy humour; serious crimes are black crimes'; and the devil wears black clothing. This black stereotype (the association between black and evil) is not strictly a western phenomenon; Adams and Osgood (1973) concluded that black is seen, in almost all cultures, as the colour of evil and death.
The impact of stereotypes on impression formation is well documented in the literature , and in particular the impact of gender stereotypes , physical attractiveness stereotypes Longo, 1991), racial stereotypes (Brown, 1995) and stereotypes of the elderly . The black clothing stereotype, the topic of this study, however, has received little attention to date.
Research has shown that the clothing an individual wears influences their own behaviour . Some groups of subjects in their study were dressed in robes and hoods as worn by the Ku Klux Klan (antisocial cue). Other groups of subjects were dressed in nurses' uniforms (prosocial cue). All subjects had to decide the level of shock to deliver to another person for failing a task. Results revealed that subjects in Klan-like uniforms delivered higher shocks than subjects in nurse-like uniforms. showed that an individual's behaviour can be influenced by the colour of their clothing only. In their experiment they manipulated CCC 0888±4080/97/010047±07