Effects of personality traits, clothing style and gender on judgments of occupational suitability

The research linking personality traits, clothing style, gender, and occupations is reviewed. Research indicates that clothing and personality traits provide individuating information which has an effect over categorical information (gender of target person) when making first impressions. Personality traits and occupational stereotypes are highly related. Congruence between personality traits and occupational stereotypes is a common effect which has been called trait-matching. However, there has been evidence of sex-matching for occupations that lie in the extreme ends of the gender population.; The first purpose of the current study was to explore the gender and personality traits for members of 30 occupations as judged by upper level undergraduates. The second purpose of the current study was to determine the relative strength of clothing style and personality traits as individuating information which is diagnostic of occupational suitability. Photographs were used to vary the clothing styles and gender of the target persons. Consistent and inconsistent categories of 9 clothing styles and 17 personality traits were established in Experiment 1. Individuating information (relationship of traits and clothing to 8 occupations) and categorical information (gender of target) were varied in Experiment 2 to obtain occupational suitability ratings.; There were no significant differences across experimental conditions, however, the mean value directions are discussed in terms of how they relate to the hypotheses. The analysis, using a fractional replication of a complete factorial, indicated that there were interactions present, however, such a design did not allow for an analysis of the interactions. The conditions were split by the size of the company in which the subjects received most of their interviewing experience and, in general, those subjects with the most experience from larger companies were not influenced by personality traits, clothing styles, or gender when making suitability ratings. The subjects with experience at smaller companies were influenced by clothing styles when providing occupational suitability ratings. However, the differences were not in the direction as expected. Inconsistent and unknown clothing styles were rated higher on occupational suitability than consistent clothing styles. The results as they relate to previous studies and suggestions for further research are discussed.