Sportswear as Communication : A Comparison Between Identity Signaling and How They are Perceived

Abstract

Physical appearance is the most readily available visual cue in first impression situations and can thus influence the judgments and subsequent behavior of the perciever. Clothing has been singled out by many researchers as a powerful aspect of physical appearance that is highly expressive in nature. However most clothing and first impression studies either have forcefully categorized clothing choices into broad categories (e.g., casual look, sporty look, professional look, etc.) or have been manipulated to best represent the clot hing category or self-identity of the wearer. Also, to this day, to the best of my knowledge, there has not been any research on the everyday sportswear choices of sports participants and thier communicative aspects. Along these lines, the current study is, based on person perception and social identity theory, an attempt to provide some insight as to the signaling aspects of sportswear as well as how these signals are percieved and interpreted to make first impression judgments by observers. More specifically, the study looks to compare the intentions and human brand personality of sportswear consumers with judgments made by percievers about the social identity, self-identity and personality traits of the wearer in a first impression setting. The study looked to compare how first impressions of sports club participants differ according to the type of clothing (active, casual, and non-sportswear) that they were wearing as well as comparing the self-perceptions with the first impression ratings of observers. Finally, the study compared the first impression judgments between the types of sport (basketball, baseball, soccer, and weightlifting). Results showed that active sportswear wearers are non-sportswear wearers were rated higher on almost all aspects than casual sportswear wearers. Furthermore, the self-perceptions of sports club participants were significantly higher than the first impression ratings made by observers. Finally, there were significant differences between the first impressions based on the sport type. The applied and theoretical implications of the study findings are discussed along with future directions for research.