Discussion Post 2

648 | © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jopy Journal of Personality. 2019;87:648–660.

Received: 8 January 2018 | Revised: 2 July 2018 | Accepted: 6 July 2018 DOI: 10.1111/jopy.12423

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

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

John B. Nezlek1,2 | Emilia Mochort1 | Marzena Cypryańska3

1Institute of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poznań, Poland 2Department of Psychology, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia 3Department of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland Correspondence John B. Nezlek, Department of Psychology, College of William and Mary, Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23187. Email: [email protected]

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 meas-ures 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 relation-ships between the strength of these motives and private self‐consciousness, social anxiety, and self‐monitoring. Participants felt better about themselves when they re-ceived 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 mani-fests itself in daily life in the form of motives for choosing daily attire, specifically for motives that involve self‐presentation. KEYWORDS attire, diary study, self‐consciousness, self‐monitoring, self‐presentation, well‐being

1 | INTRODUCTION We are not the first to notice this discrepancy. For exam-ple, in a review of research on self‐presentation, Leary, Allen, The term self‐presentation is often used to describe the man-and Terry (2011) described the near‐total lack of research on ner in which people plan, adopt, and carry out strategies for self‐presentation that has been done in naturalistic settings. managing the impressions they make on others (e.g., Arkin, While acknowledging the value of laboratory research, a Appelman, & Burger, 1980), and much of the research and judgment with which we fully agree, they stressed the pos-theory about self‐presentation relies either directly or in-sible lack of ecological validity of some laboratory research. directly on ideas put forth by Goffman in his classic The One goal of the present study was to address the needs de-Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956). Despite the scribed by Leary et al. explicit focus of Goffman on everyday life, and the stated One consequence of the reliance on laboratory methods goal of research on self‐presentation to understand how peo-for self‐presentation research has been the lack of develop-ple present themselves in daily life, the vast majority of the ment of an understanding of the relationships between self‐research on self‐presentation and related constructs has oc-presentation and dispositional individual differences such as curred in the laboratory, an environment that is removed from personality traits. Certainly, individual differences in self‐everyday life by design. presentation have been studied successfully using laboratory

methods; yet, such methods may not be the best way to do this. As discussed by Nezlek and Smith (2017), there is an inher-ent inconsistency in the level of generality of most measures of individual differences and most experiments. Measures of individual differences tend to be focused broadly, asking re-spondents to answer questions in terms of what they are like typically or generally. In contrast, the responses collected in experiments tend to represent a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a specific situation at a specific time in a specific place.

• the present study, we examined self‐presentational motives as they existed in people’s daily lives, which provided measures of self‐presentation that were not limited to a specific time and place. We thought that such measures would provide a good basis to examine relationships between self‐presentation and dispositional measures of individual differences. We examined self‐presentation within the context of people’s choices of dress/attire, an aspect of self‐presentation mentioned by Goffman (1956,
• 98). We chose attire because clothing is visible to others, and as such, it is a form of self‐presentation. It is also ubiquitous—most people wear clothes most of the time. Moreover, most people have some freedom regarding exactly what they wear (we did not study individuals who were required to wear uniforms), which meant that choice of attire could reflect individuals’ self‐presentational motives.
• noted by Solomon and Schopler (1982), the possibility that clothing is an important manifestation of psychological motives and processes has a long history in psychology, dating at least to William James (1890), who believed that clothing was part of the material self, which is an important part of the self. Solomon and Schopler (1982) also discussed various reasons why clothing should be related to how we think about the self, and one of the more important of these was the social function clothing might serve. Clothing can be considered as a self‐presentational activity. People dress in different ways to communicate different messages. See Lennon et al. (2014) for a review of research on what fashion communicates, although this review focuses on the effects fashion may have rather than on the motives underlying choice of attire.

Moreover, it appears that what people wear allows observers to make inferences about the wearer’s personality. For example, Naumann, Vazire, Rentfrow, and Gosling (2009) found that observers could correctly judge aspects of targets’ personality from their appearance, part of which included style of dress. Other analyses of the same sample reported in Vazire, Naumann, Rentfrow, and Gosling (2008) found that observers could correctly judge how narcissistic targets were from their appearance and that the clothing items targets wore were important cues for making such judgments.

1.1 | Previous research on clothing, self‐presentation, and public self‐consciousness

Consistent with Fenigstein, Scheier, and Buss’s (1975) characterization of public self‐consciousness, Miller, Davis, and Rowold (1982, Study 1) found that participants who were high in public self‐consciousness (defined in terms of a median split) were more interested in and more involved with clothing than individuals who were low in public self‐consciousness. They concluded that “clothing can be used to enhance public presentation of the self” (p. 364) and that public self‐consciousness was positively related to concerns about presentation of the self, with clothing as part of this self‐presentation.

More directly relevant to the present study are the results of Solomon and Schopler (1982). In a single assessment study, they found that public self‐consciousness was significantly and positively correlated to the strength of motives for selecting daily attire and to a measure of general interest in clothing (7 of 10 motives for women; 3 of 10 for men). In contrast, private self‐consciousness was significantly correlated to only three motives for women and one for men, and social anxiety was significantly correlated with only one motive for both women and men. Neither private self‐consciousness nor social anxiety was significantly correlated with general interest in clothing. They concluded that “Buss’ reminder that a large fraction of self‐awareness is devoted to an evaluation of the social self underscores the need to understand the individual’s tactical use of social products and symbols for self‐definition. Foremost among these is, of course, clothing” (p. 514). Similarly, Kwon (1992) found that public self‐consciousness was related to the use of clothing as a self‐presentational mechanism.

There is also some research that has been conducted in naturalistic settings suggesting that public self‐consciousness is positively related to concerns about appearance. In a study of individual differences in self‐presentation in naturally occurring social interaction, Nezlek and Leary (2002) found that wanting to be seen as attractive and the extent to which people thought about others’ evaluations of them were positively related to a factor they labeled “Impression Motivation.” One of the more important variables constituting this factor was public self‐consciousness.

1.2 | Self‐presentation and self‐monitoring

The second individual difference in which we were in-terested was self‐monitoring. As originally proposed by Snyder (1974), “individuals differ in the extent to which they monitor (observe and control) their expressive behavior and self‐presentation” (p. 536). Although self‐monitoring is often discussed in terms of its influence on active, ongoing interaction, self‐monitoring can also include more strategic behaviors, such as the selection of attire to create a certain image or impression. For example, Snyder (1987) reported that high self‐monitors have more diverse wardrobes (styles and accessories) than low self‐monitors, which allow them to tailor their image more precisely for different occasions.

Consistent with the definition of self‐monitoring, in a study of workplace attire, Peluchette, Karl, and Rust (2006) found that self‐monitoring was positively related to (a) general interest in clothing, (b) the value of workplace attire, (c) the motivation to dress to impress others, (d) beliefs that selection of attire influenced others’ views, (e) how influential workers thought they were, and (f) how much workers believed dress influenced work outcomes. In terms of the present study, we expected that self‐monitoring would be positively related to the strength of self‐presentational motives regarding attire, particularly for motives that involved impressing others.

1.3 | Self‐presentational success and wellbeing

1. defining characteristic of self‐presentation is that it is goal directed: People want to project a certain image or be seen in a certain way. Assuming this, when people think they have achieved their self‐presentational goals, they should feel better. Goal achievement is rewarding and should lead to increased well‐being. The assumption that successful self‐presentation is associated with increased well‐being was confirmed by Nezlek, Schütz, and Sellin (2007). In a study of self‐presentation in daily social interaction, they found that “self‐presentational success was associated with more positive and rewarding interactions” (p. 371).
2. extension, if people believe that what they wore had its desired effect (e.g., to be seen as attractive), they should feel better about themselves than if they do not believe that what they wore had the desired effect. Such beliefs can be based upon self‐evaluations (e.g., “I think I wore something attractive/appropriate today”) or the evaluations of others (e.g., “Someone complimented what I wore today”). Accordingly, in the present study, we measured both self‐ and other‐evaluations of daily attire with the general expectation that both of these would be positively related to well‐being.

1.4 | The present study

Each day for 2 weeks, participants in the present study rated how important various motives were for choos-ing what they wore that day. They also recorded whether they were complimented or criticized about their attire, and each day, they provided measures of their affect, self‐esteem, and satisfaction with life. Finally, participants provided dispositional measures of self‐consciousness and self‐monitoring. These data allowed us to examine relationships between motives for dressing (including self‐presentational motives) and dispositional measures of self‐presentational concerns, and to examine within‐person relationships between feedback about attire and self‐evalu-ation and well‐being.

Our primary hypotheses concerned relationships between self‐presentation and public self‐consciousness. We were interested in public self‐consciousness because it has been defined as a trait that explicitly concerns the extent to which people are concerned about the impressions others have of them. “The public self‐consciousness factor was defined by a general awareness of the self as a social object that has an effect on others, e.g., ‘I’m very concerned about the way I present myself.” (Fenigstein et al., 1975, p. 523). Our general expectation was that the strength of self‐presentational motives regarding choice of attire would be positively related to public self‐consciousness. Although we did not expect to find relationships between motives to dress and private self‐consciousness and social anxiety, we examined such relationships on an exploratory basis. Moreover, including these measures allowed us to control analyses of relationships between public self‐consciousness and motives for dressing for individual differences in these constructs—for example, ensuring that relationships between public self‐consciousness and motives did not reflect social anxiety.

2 | METHOD

2.1 | Participants

The initial sample of participants consisted of 87 individuals (74 female) who were employed full time and ranged in age from 18 to 58 years (M = 34.54, SD = 6.82). Participants were solicited in two ways: Some (35) were recruited via Facebook for a study, and some (52) were students who took part in partial fulfillment of a course requirement.

2.2 | Procedure

Participants were introduced to the study in small groups. They were told that the study concerned people’s motives for choosing what they wore each day and that they would be answering two types of questionnaires: Some they would need to complete only once (trait‐level measures), and some they would need to complete once a day for 2 weeks (diary or day‐level measures). For the diary measures, participants were told to provide these data as late in the day as was practical. They were also told how to use the website to provide their data.

2.3 | Measures

2.3.1 | Trait measures

Participants completed two trait‐level measures: the Self‐Consciousness Scale (SCS; Fenigstein et al., 1975) and the Self‐Monitoring Scale (SMON; Snyder & Gangestad, 1986). The SCS is a 23‐item scale that has three subscales: Private Self‐Consciousness, Public Self‐Consciousness, and Social Anxiety. Responses were made using a 5‐point scale with endpoints labeled 1 = extremely uncharacteristic and 5 = extremely characteristic. Scores on the subscales of the SCS consisted of mean responses to the items on each subscale. The SMON is an 18‐item scale that uses a true/false format. Scores on the SMON consisted of the total number of true responses.

For the present study, all measures were administered in Polish. A Polish‐language version of the SCS created by Zakrzewski and Strzałkowska (1987) was used, and a Polish‐language version of the SMON was created. This scale and the daily measures were developed by a team of psychologists who were fluent in English and Polish. Items were translated and back‐translated and then examined for cultural appropriateness before administration. Copies of the Polish‐language versions of these measures are available from the corresponding author.

2.3.2 | Daily measures

Each day, participants answered a series of questions about their motives for, and thoughts about, why they dressed as they did each day. Using a 7‐point scale with endpoints labeled not at all (1) and most (7), with a midpoint labeled moderately, participants indicated how important the following motives were each day in response to this prompt: “How important were the following factors for you when you were thinking about what to wear?”

1. Choosing an outfit for a special or specific occasion or event.
2. Wearing something new/unique.
3. Dressing for the weather.
4. Dressing to make an impression on a specific person.
5. Putting on clothes in which I feel good about myself.
6. create a very positive impression on others.
7. create a specific image.
8. cover the imperfections of my body.
9. adapt to the circumstances.
10. Dressing to not stand out.
11. Dressing to stand out.

We chose these items based on participants’ responses during prestudy focus groups and the need for daily items to reflect the self‐presentational motives on which the study focused (i.e., self‐consciousness and self‐monitoring). Some items measured motives that we thought reflected self‐consciousness (impressing a specific person, making a general positive impression, creating an image, dressing for a special event, dressing to stand out). We also measured avoidance‐focused motives (to cover the imperfections of my body, dressing to not stand out) to understand more fully the motives for selecting attire. Given that self‐moni-toring also concerns people’s motives for managing the im-pressions others have of them, we expected that there would be some overlap in relationships between motives and self‐monitoring and public self‐consciousness. Finally, we measured motives that should be unrelated to public self‐consciousness or self‐monitoring (dressing for the weather, putting on clothes in which I feel good about myself) to en-sure that the relationships we found between traits and mo-tives did not simply reflect relationships between traits and the tendency to describe any motive as important (or not).

Participants also answered questions about their clothing choice: How important was it for you how you were dressed today? How much were you satisfied with how you were dressed today? and How much do you think other people were thinking about what you wore today? We expected that responses on the first and third of these questions would be positively related to public self‐consciousness. Each of these questions was answered on a 7‐point scale, with endpoints labeled not all (1) to the maximum (7). They also indicated whether anyone had “complimented them or said something nice” about their attire and whether anyone had “criticized them or said something negative” about their attire. In response to these two questions, participants provided a number (including 0). Using a 7‐point scale, participants also indicated how much they thought about their appearance in general, which we expected to be related to public self‐consciousness.

Finally, participants answered a series of questions about their well‐being and how they felt each day. These included four items (happy, sad, relaxed, and anxious) representing the quadrants of the affective circumplex (Feldman Barrett & Russell, 1998); a question about life satisfaction, “Today, did you feel satisfied or dissatisfied with your life?”; a question about confidence, “Today, did you feel confident or insecure?”; and four questions adapted from the Rosenberg Self‐Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) for daily administration (see Nezlek, 2012 pp. 139–145). All questions were answered on 7‐point scales, with higher numbers representing more of the construct being measured. Two of the self‐esteem items were negatively valent (“Today, all in all, I was inclined to feel that I was a failure,” and “Today, I thought I was no good at all”), and two were positively valent (“Today, on the whole, I was satisfied with myself,” and “Today, I was able to do things as well as most other people”).

3 | RESULTS

3.1 | Data preparation

Before conducting the analyses, we determined how well participants had complied with instructions for the daily diary component of the study. Because the data were collected online and each entry was date and time stamped, we were able to eliminate improper entries (e.g., multiple entries made on the same day). Of the 733 entries retained for analysis, 93% were provided after 5:00 p.m. of the day in question or before 1:00 p.m. of the next day.1 Of the original 87 participants, 26 were not included in the final analyses because they did not provide six or more valid daily reports. Three provided no days, 15 participants provided only 1 day of data, and 10 provided 2–4 days of data. This left 61 participants (55 women) who provided 733 days of data (M = 12.0, SD = 2.84, min = 6, max = 17), and of these 61 participants, 55 (91%) provided 8 or more days of data.2 All data are available via the Open Science Framework (Nezlek, 2018).

3.2 | Overview of analyses and descriptive statistics

The data were conceptualized as a two‐level structure, with daily measures nested within people, and the data were analyzed using a series of multilevel models (MLM) using the program HLM (Raudenbush, Bryk, & Congdon, 2011). The first set of analyses examined relationships between people’s motives for choosing their attire each day and individual differences in trait‐level measures. The second set of analyses examined within‐person relationships between wellbeing and emotions and feedback from others about one’s attire (e.g., Is being complimented about what one wears associated with increased well‐being?). See Nezlek (2012, pp. 50–122) for a discussion of MLM analyses of diary data.

One daily measure, self‐esteem, consisted of more than one item. To examine the day‐level reliability of this measure (the internal consistency of the responses made each day), we fol-lowed procedures recommended by Nezlek (2017). These anal-yses were three‐level models in which responses were nested within days and days were nested within persons. The estimated reliability from these analyses was .66, which we deemed as high enough to treat the four items as a scale. Accordingly, daily self‐esteem was defined as the mean response to the four items, following the reversal of the two negatively valent items.

To provide a context for the analyses, we present summary statistics for our measures. Summary statistics for the trait‐level measures are presented in Table 1. According to the guidelines proposed by Shrout (1998), all of the trait‐level measures had at least moderate reliability (.61 to .80), and most had substantial reliability (.81 and above).

Multilevel summary statistics (variance estimates and means) for the daily measures were estimated by a “totally unconditional” model, which is presented below.

Day level: yij =

˜0j +rij.

Person level: ˜0j =

° 00 + u0j.

In this model, there were i days nested within j persons. The variance of rij is the within‐ person (Level 1) variance, and the variance of u0j is the between‐person (Level 2) variance. The results of these analyses are presented in Tables 2 and 3. For all of the daily measures except criticism from others, there was enough within‐person variance to justify analyses of within‐person relationships.3

3.3 | Relationships between trait‐level measures and self‐presentational motives concerning daily attire

To provide a fully informed description of relationships between trait‐level measures and daily measures of self‐presentational motives concerning attire, we report the results of two sets of analyses. In the first set of analyses, daily measures of motives for selecting attire and thoughts about attire were modeled as a function of the three subscales of the Self‐Consciousness Scale (Public Self‐Consciousness, Private Self‐Consciousness, and social anxiety) and scores on the Self‐Monitoring Scale as single predictors in the person level of the model presented above. Traits were standardized before analysis, so the resulting coefficients would be on the same metric. These individual coefficients are conceptually equivalent to regression coefficients between each of the daily measures and each of the trait‐level measures. Relationships between the trait‐level measures did not

TABLE 1 Descriptive statistics for, and correlations between, trait‐level measures

M SD α Private self‐consciousness Social anxiety Self‐monitoring

Public self‐consciousness 3.57 0.69 .89 .51*** .12 .38**

Private self‐consciousness 3.86 0.58 .91

.08 .27*

Social anxiety 2.67 0.84 .86 –.25*

Self‐monitoring 7.18 3.69 .76

*

p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

TABLE 2 Descriptive statistics for daily measures concerning attire

Motives Mean Within‐person variance Between‐person variance

Special event 3.35 2.04 0.99

Wear new/unique 3.04 1.84 0.79

Weather 5.12 0.96 0.53

Impress specific person 2.83 0.52 0.98

Feel good about self 5.49 0.61 0.25

Make a general positive 3.49 1.58 1.14 impression

Create an image 3.61 1.40 1.30

Cover imperfections 4.06 0.91 1.73

Adapt to circumstances 4.36 1.44 0.76

Not to stand out 2.99 1.16 1.07

To stand out 2.97 1.31 1.04

Other measures

Importance of dress 3.94 1.58 0.48

Satisfaction with dress 4.49 1.04 0.29

Concern with others’ 3.16 1.40 0.63 evaluations

Compliments about attire 0.59 0.79 0.13

Criticism about attire 0.02 0.03 0.00

Thought about general 2.70 1.00 0.75 appearance

TABLE 3 Descriptive statistics for daily measures of well‐being and emotions

Mean Within‐person variance Between‐person variance

Self‐esteem 4.02 0.27 0.12

Life satisfaction 5.19 0.77 0.44

Confident/secure 5.14 0.77 0.54

Happy 4.47 0.74 0.37

Relaxed 4.04 1.14 0.48

Sad 2.34 1.24 0.47

Anxious 2.81 1.43 0.48

contribute to these estimates because the traits were analyzed separately. The resulting model is below. In this equation, “Trait” refers to one of the subscales of the SCS or scores on the Self‐Monitoring Scale.

Person level: ˜0j = ∗(Trait)+u0j.

° 00 +° 01

The results of these analyses are presented in Table 4. As expected, public self‐consciousness was the trait that was the most consistently related to daily self‐presentational motives for attire. As can be seen from the coefficients presented in Table 4, consistent with expectations, public self‐conscious-ness was positively related to most measures of motives for selecting attire. There were no significant relationships be-tween public self‐consciousness and motives that did not concern making impressions (e.g., dressing for the weather and dressing to feel good about the self). These null findings suggest that our daily measures of motives had some discrim-inant validity. Participants higher in public self‐conscious-ness did not simply rate all motives as stronger compared to those lower in public self‐consciousness.

Private self‐consciousness was significantly and positively related to only three motives, each of which concerned making a positive impression, and it was related to thinking about appearance in general. Social anxiety was related to only two motives that were consistent with the definition of

TABLE 4 Relationships between traits and daily measures concerning attire—Individual predictors

Public self‐consciousness Private self‐consciousness Social anxiety Self‐ monitoring

Motives

Special event	.42***	.19	.03	.13
Wear something new/ unique	.47***	.34**	.06	.21a
Weather	–.04	.06	–.11	–.03
Impress a specific person	.55***	.20	–.16	.28*
Feel good about self	–.04	.08	–.14*	.04
Make a general positive impression	.66***	.35*	–.12	.55***
Create a specific image	.48***	.26	–.12	.37*
Cover body imperfections	.20	.30	.13	.35a
Adapt to circumstances	.28*	.12	–.11	.12
Not to stand out	.20	–.16	.20*	–.01

To stand out .44** .28* .02 .42**

Other measures

Importance of dress .28** .13 –.10 .12

Satisfaction with dress .10 .05 –.17* .07

Concern with others’ .38*** .14 –.08 .23* evaluations

Thought about general .60*** .37** .07 .25* appearance

a

p < .10. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

the construct: a negative relationship with the motive to feel good about the self and a positive relationship with the motive not to stand out. Social anxiety was also negatively related to satisfaction with daily attire. As expected, self‐monitoring was positively related to the four motives that concerned making an impression, and it was positively related to being concerned with others’ evaluations and with thinking about appearance in general.

As can be seen from the correlations presented in Table 1, scores on the Self‐Monitoring Scale were significantly correlated with all three subscales of the SCS, and Public Self‐Consciousness and Private Self‐Consciousness scores were significantly correlated. Given this, we analyzed each of the daily measures as a function of all four of these measures simultaneously. This allowed us to determine the extent to which our trait measures were related to daily motives, controlling for the other measures. The person‐level model is presented below.

Person level: ˜0j = ∗(PUB)+ ∗(PRV)

° 00 +° 01 ° 02

∗(ANX)+ ∗(SM N)+u0j.

+° 03 ° 04

The results of these analyses are presented in Table 5. When combined with the other measures, all the relation-ships between motives and public self‐consciousness that were significant in the analyses of individual traits were significant in the combined analyses. In contrast, private self‐consciousness was significantly related to only one mo-tive—not to stand out. Relationships between social anxi-ety and the daily measures did not change markedly when social anxiety was analyzed with the other three measures.

Relationships between self‐monitoring and the daily measures changed somewhat when self‐monitoring was analyzed with the other three measures. Relationships between self‐monitoring and dressing to impress were not significant in the combined analyses, nor were relationships between self‐monitoring and concern about others’ evaluations and thoughts about general appearance, whereas they were significant in the individual analyses. Nevertheless, the relationships we found are consistent with the conceptualization of self‐monitoring as the extent to which people “differ in the extent to which they can and do observe and control their expressive behavior and self‐presentation” (Snyder & Gangestad, 1986).

3.4 | Self‐presentational success and wellbeing

We conceptualized self‐presentational success concerning attire in terms of internal satisfaction (e.g., “I liked what I wore today”) and external praise (e.g., “Other people liked

TABLE 5 Relationships between traits and daily measures concerning attire–All predictors

Public self‐consciousness Private self‐consciousness Social anxiety Self‐ monitoring

Motives

Special event	.45**	–.02	–.04	–.05
Wear something new/ unique	.39**	.14	.01	.03
Weather	–.06	.13	–.13	–.07
Impress a specific person	.63*	–.10	–.22*	.01
Feel good about self	–.10	.14a	–.14*	.00
Make a general positive impression	.55***	–.01	–.11	.32*
Create a specific image	.42*	.01	–.13	.18
Cover body imperfections	–.09	.23	.22	.38a
Adapt to circumstances	.32*	–.02	–.16a	–.03
Not to stand out	.37*	–.36*	.19a	–.01

To stand out .29a .05 .05 .35*

Other measures

Importance of dress .32* –.01 –.15a –.04

Satisfaction with dress .13 .01 –.20** –.03

Concern with others’ .43*** –.08 –.11 .06 evaluations

Thought about general .55*** .09 .01 .02 appearance

a

p < .10. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

what I wore today”). Relationships between self‐presentational success concerning attire and well‐being were examined using a series of models in which well‐being was predicted by self‐satisfaction with attire and the compliments people received each day. Each day, participants indicated how many people had complimented or criticized them about what they wore. There were so few instances of criticism—only 13 across 733 days—that we did not think it was appropriate to analyze relationships between criticism and other measures. Compliments were more common. One or more compliments were given on 264 of 733 days (37%). The distribution of number of comments was skewed such that more than two compliments were given on only 39 days (5%). Given this, compliments were recoded as 0, 1, and 2 or more. Note that 55 of 61 participants reported receiving at least one compliment.

The Level 1 model for these analyses is below. Both predictors were entered group‐mean‐centered, and both were initially modeled as randomly varying. Random error terms were deleted following guidelines provided by Nezlek (2001). The results are summarized in Table 6.

Day level: yij = ∗(Satisfaction)+˜2j ∗(Compliments)+rij.

˜0j +˜1j

People’s satisfaction with how they were dressed each day was positively related to all measures of well‐being and to happiness and feeling relaxed and was negatively related to feeling sad and anxious. Receiving compliments was also positively related to all measures of well‐being and to feeling happy. When receiving compliments was examined in isolation, relationships with feeling relaxed and feeling sad were also significant, although these effects were not as strong (in absolute terms) as were the relationships between compliments and other outcomes.

We also examined the possibility that trait levels of self‐consciousness and self‐monitoring would moderate relationships between self‐presentational success and well‐being. This was done by including trait‐level measures in the model above. We found no evidence that within‐person relationships between self‐presentational success and well‐being varied as a function of trait levels of self‐consciousness or self‐monitoring. Of the 21 analyses we conducted, there were no significant moderating effects. One effect was significant at the .10 level, and the rest were all p > .15.

TABLE 6 Relationships between daily measures of well‐being and emotions and satisfaction with attire and compliments about attire: Unstandardized coefficients

Self‐rating of satisfaction Compliments from others Coeff. t ratio Coeff. t ratio

Self‐esteem .10*** 4.34 .10** 3.22

Life satisfaction .20*** 4.81 .23*** 4.46

Confident/secure	.25***	5.70	.16***	2.96
Happy	.22***	5.18	.21**	3.45
Relaxed	.17***	3.90	.05	<1

Sad –.10* 2.01 –.12 1.82a

Anxious –.11* 2.09 –.01 <1

a

p < .10. * p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.

4 | DISCUSSION

As expected, the relationships between public self‐consciousness and most of our measures of daily attire were positive: 7 of 11 motives and 3 of 4 of other measures. Positive relationships with public self‐consciousness (from the combined analyses) were found for the following motives: wearing something for a special event, wearing something new or unique, dressing to impress a specific person, dressing to create a general positive impression, dressing to create an image, dressing to adapt to circumstances, dressing to cover imperfections, and dressing to stand out and not to stand out. Moreover, public self‐consciousness was positively related to how important attire was, how much people thought about appearance in general, and how concerned they were with others’ evaluations of them.

The more self‐conscious people were, the more they were concerned with what people thought of them and with creating a positive impression on others using what they wore. Such results are consistent with how public self‐consciousness has been defined. As noted by Fenigstein et al. (1975) when presenting the SCS and discussing public self‐consciousness: “The emphasis here is clearly on the reactions of others to the self” (p. 525). These results are also consistent with previous research on the relationship between public self‐consciousness and attire (e.g., Kwon, 1992; Miller et al., 1982; Solomon & Schopler, 1982).

In contrast, private self‐consciousness was not related to most measures of motives for, and thoughts about, daily attire. The lack of such relationships is consistent with the definition of private self‐consciousness as thinking that is internally focused on the self without regard to social con-text. The present results might appear to conflict with some of the results of Kwon (1991), who found relationships be-tween private self‐consciousness and motives for dressing. It is important to note that the relationships Kwon found in-volved motives that were explicitly internally focused (e.g., enhancing one’s mood) and were not socially (or externally) focused.

Social anxiety was negatively related to how satisfied people were with their clothing, with the motive to use attire to feel good about the self, and with the motive of dressing to impress a specific person. It was positively related to the motive to not stand out (i.e., dressing to avoid attracting the attention of others). These relationships are consistent with the focus of social anxiety on people’s concerns about being evaluated negatively by others. One way to avoid negative evaluation is to dress in ways that do not call attention to the self, and it appears that social anxiety operates in these ways (at least in part).

At the zero order, self‐monitoring was positively related to motives to impress a specific person, to make a general positive impression, to create an image, to cover imperfections, and to stand out. All of these relationships are consistent with the definition of self‐monitoring as the ability or tendency to manipulate one’s outward appearance to create an impression on others. It is important to note that self‐monitoring was not related to motives that did not directly concern the impression one made on others (e.g., dressing for a special event), which suggests that our daily measure of motives had some discriminative/divergent validity. It is also important to note that some of these relationships became nonsignificant when public self‐consciousness was controlled, a topic discussed below.

4.1 | Public self‐consciousness and self‐monitoring

At the trait level, our primary focus was on public self‐consciousness and self‐monitoring. This emphasis reflected the fact that both of these constructs concern people’s thoughts and motives regarding their public appearance (concerns about self‐presentation). It is important to note that although both concern public appearance, they concern different aspects of appearance. This distinction is discussed by Fenigstein (1979):

The present construct of public self‐conscious-ness should be differentiated from a seem-ingly related dimension called self‐monitoring (Snyder, 1974). The self‐monitor is also sen-sitive to the social behavior of others, but pri-marily for the purposes of monitoring and manipulating his or her own behavior so as to present an appropriate image. Although the self‐monitor must obviously attend to his or her own behavior, the orientation is primarily outward toward situational requirements, as opposed to the self‐conscious person, whose attention is

primarily self‐directed. (p. 76)

Such a distinction is consistent with the fact that scores on the two measures are not highly correlated. For example, Turner, Scheier, Carver, and Ickes (1978) reported correlations between .2 and .3 across the six samples in their study. Although the correlation of .38 we found is larger than these, it does not suggest that the two constructs as measured in the present study were related in a meaningfully different fashion than they were in Turner et al.

The relative lack of relationships between self‐presentational motives concerning attire and self‐monitoring in the combined analyses (compared to the number of relationships we found for public self‐consciousness) may have reflected relationships between the motives we studied. Perhaps if we had included more motives that explicitly focused on influencing other people (the external focus discussed by Fenigstein), we may have found more relationships between self‐monitoring and self‐presentational motives concerning attire. Even so, in the present study, when public self‐consciousness and self‐monitoring were both predictors of the motive to impress a specific person, only public self‐consciousness was significantly related: Self‐monitoring was not significant, whereas it was in isolation. Nevertheless, self‐monitoring was significantly related to the motives to make a positive general impression and to stand out, indicating that self‐monitoring plays a (perhaps important) role in the selection of daily attire.

4.2 | Self‐presentational success and wellbeing

As expected, compliments from others and satisfaction with one’s attire were positively related to well‐being defined in terms of self‐esteem, satisfaction with life, and different emotions. Attire seems to be an important part of social identity, and when people think they have dressed well or when someone tells us we have dressed well, we feel better about ourselves and our lives. Interestingly, how satisfied people were with how they dressed was related to all measures of well‐being, whereas compliments from others were not related to negative emotions (sad and anxious) or to feelings of relaxation.

These relationships suggest that compliments from others about attire enhance various aspects of well‐being, but they do not influence affect as measured on the anxious–relaxed dimension. This difference was not expected, and given the lack of any relevant research and theory, we will not speculate regarding why this occurred. Such an explanation will require future research explicitly designed to answer such questions.

4.3 | Advantages of the present study over laboratory‐based research

Although possible, studying the motives people have for choosing their attire would be difficult in a laboratory setting. Certainly, people could be asked to recall their motives; however, asking people to recall specific behaviors (and internal states) over lengthy periods is fraught with problems, such as the greater salience of more recent or more important occasions and the possibility that similar motives are not distinguished (Nezlek, 2012, pp. 4, 5). For example, motives such as dressing to impress a specific person and dressing to create an image may not be clearly distinguished when they are recalled over a lengthy period.

In terms of understanding relationships between traits and behaviors, the present study also provided meaningful advantages over studies in which motives are measured on a single occasion or very few occasions. For example, some critics of trait models of individual differences (e.g., Mischel) have argued that traits have little or no explanatory power. Admittedly, although relationships between specific behaviors—such as measures taken in a laboratory study and traits, which are meant to measure broad predispositions—may be weak, the weakness of critiques of trait models that are based on such results is that there is an inconsistency in the levels of analysis of the traits (general) and the behaviors (specific to a situation). This is the same problem that was pointed out by Ajzen and Fishbein (1977), who noted that weak relationships between attitudes and behavior may reflect the fact that attitudes are typically measured at a broad level (e.g., Do you eat a healthy diet?), whereas behaviors are measured more specifically (e.g., Did you eat at a fast‐food restaurant today?). By collecting reports of motives for selecting attire across days, in the present study, the levels of analysis for traits and behaviors were similarly broad, which provided a better basis for examining relationships between traits and behaviors than would have been possible if behavior had been measured on a single occasion, as in most laboratory‐based studies.

4.4 | Null findings

Assuming that measures are reliable and valid, the failure to find relationships can be due to a lack of statistical power, and the null findings of the present study need to be evaluated in light of this possibility. For present purposes, we were concerned with the power of the current design to detect significant rela-tionships between intercepts and person‐level measures (e.g., relationships between self‐consciousness and mean strength of a motive) and to detect significant moderating relationships involving slopes (e.g., self‐consciousness as a moderator of re-lationships between compliments and well‐being). Based on the estimates presented by Scherbaum and Ferreter (2009), the power of the present design to detect a relationship between a person‐level trait (e.g., social anxiety) and an intercept (e.g., average strength of a motive) was above .80 for a medium ef-fect. Based on the estimates presented by Mathieu, Aguinis, Culpepper, and Chen (2012), the present design had power of at least .50 to detect moderating relationships.

Noting this, power calculations within the multilevel framework are complicated and not well understood. This is due in part to the fact that determining the power of a multilevel design requires taking into account numerous aspects of an analysis that may be hard to estimate (e.g., Nezlek, 2011, pp. 64, 65). Nevertheless, it appears that the present design provided reasonable power for the prime hypotheses of interest.

5 | LIMITATIONS, CONCLUSIONS,

AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

The underrepresentation of men in the sample was an important limitation of the present study. Although a good faith effort was made to recruit and retain male participants (14 men started the study, but only six were included in the final analyses), there were not enough men to provide a basis for drawing conclusions about sex differences. Although we are not aware of arguments suggesting that the relationships we found in the present study differ between the sexes, it is possible that they do.

The cultural milieu in which the study was conducted may also limit the generalizability of the present findings. The present study was conducted in Poland, an industrialized country that is part of what is generally referred to as the West. Although a definitive answer may not exist, it has been proposed that the construction of the self (and by extension, the operation of self‐focused constructs such as public self‐consciousness) varies meaningfully across cultures, and East–West differences have been the focus of much attention. If cultures vary meaningfully in how the self is constructed, the ways in which self‐related constructs, including self‐presentational motives, are expressed might also vary. Answering such questions requires research that is specifically designed to answer them.

The present study examined self‐presentational motives for selecting attire. Choice of attire may also serve a value‐expressive function. In the present study, people indicated whether they wanted to create an impression, but we did not ask them about the motives for the impressions they wanted to create. For example, someone may have wanted to create an impression of being hardworking, whereas another person may have wanted to create an impression of being an intellectual. Unfortunately, the data we collected cannot resolve such issues.

Finally, there are issues of causality. In describing the re-sults, we assumed that compliments about one’s attire led to increases in well‐being. It is possible that this relationship reflected the fact that on days when well‐being was higher, people felt better about their attire and may have been more likely to interpret comments as compliments than on days when their well‐being was lower. Such a possibility needs to be examined specifically.

Although self‐presentational motives have been examined in naturally occurring social interaction (e.g., Leary et al., 1994; Nezlek et al., 2007), we believe that the present study is the first to examine self‐presentational motives on a dayto‐day basis. As such, it directly follows the call by Leary et al. (2011) for more studies of self‐presentational phenomena in natural settings. We hope that the success of this study will encourage other researchers to examine other aspects of naturally occurring self‐presentation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

CONFLICT OF INTERESTS

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ENDNOTES

1Given the nature of our sample (i.e., working adults with varying schedules), we used a somewhat different standard for including daily observations than the standards that have been used in some previous studies involving collegians. See Nezlek (2012) for a discussion of guidelines for retaining and excluding data in studies of this type.

2Comparisons of individuals who were retained for the final analyses and those who were not found no significant differences on all of the trait‐level measures included in the study, all ts < 1. Moreover, the results of analyses that included participants who provided 3 or 4 days of data (n = 65) were functionally equivalent to those presented in this article. We chose 6 days because we thought that this constituted a lower bound for a representative sample of daily experience.

3We considered the possibility that motives could be combined to form scale scores, but the within‐person correlations between motives and a multilevel factor analysis did not suggest this was appropriate. These analyses are described in the supporting information.

ORCID

John B. Nezlek http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4963-3637

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SUPPORTING INFORMATION

Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section at the end of the article. Appendix S1.

How to cite this article: Nezlek JB, Mochort E, Cypryańska M. Self‐presentational motives and public self‐consciousness: Why do people dress a certain way? Journal of Personality. 2019;87:648– 660. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12423

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