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Self‐presentational motives and public self‐consciousness: Why do people dress a certain way?

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Journal of Personality

Published online on

Abstract

--- - |2+ Abstract Objective This study examines the self‐presentational motives underlying people's selection of their daily dress and relationships between these motives and public self‐consciousness. Method Participants in this study, 61 working adults, described their motives for choosing what they wore each day for 2 weeks. They also provided trait‐level measures of self‐consciousness, social anxiety, and self‐monitoring. Results Multilevel modeling analyses found positive relationships between public self‐consciousness and the strength of various self‐presentational motives for why people chose the clothes they wore each day. In contrast, there were few relationships between the strength of these motives and private self‐consciousness, social anxiety, and self‐monitoring. Participants felt better about themselves when they received compliments from others about their attire and when they were more (vs. less) satisfied with how they had dressed each day. Conclusions The results suggest that dispositional public self‐consciousness manifests itself in daily life in the form of motives for choosing daily attire, specifically for motives that involve self‐presentation. - Journal of Personality, EarlyView.