Formal Dress and the Rate of Return to Teaching

Zero in the long-run. As my former students can attest, this is good news for me. One of my colleagues here at SPEA described me to a visiting job candidate as "an extremely casual dresser," which is the description I prefer to go by. When teaching externalities, I got a much larger laugh than I expected from my students by using my appearance as an example of the inherent difficulties of determining when externalities should be dealt with in public policy.

More about the study below the fold:
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Yasmine L. Konheim-Kalkstein, who holds a doctorate in educational psychology, grouped four sections of an introductory psychology course she taught last fall into two "casual" classes and two "formal" classes, each of which were held at different times and on different days.

On the first day of the study, Ms. Konheim-Kalkstein wore jeans, a drab-colored T-shirt, and gray sneakers to the casual class, and black pants, a button-up, black-and-white-striped shirt, and a small heel to the formal class. Students were surveyed about their initial impressions of her approachability, her ability to teach, her age, and her teaching style.
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For the next four weeks, she continued the routine, but often wore the same shirt — either a button-up blouse or a plain T-shirt — with both her casual and formal outfits. Students were surveyed again at the end of four weeks.

The data showed that Ms. Konheim-Kalkstein's clothing made a small difference in perceptions of her on the first day of class, with those students in the "formal" classes finding her more qualified and approachable than did those in the informal classes. But four weeks into the semester, wearing less-formal clothes had about the same effect on student perceptions as wearing formal clothes.