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

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.