You’ve heard this phrase before, I’m sure. For many, it expresses the very strong link people make between the way someone looks and their worth in society. Well-dressed people are important and poorly dressed people are not. For the most part, it is a fairly superficial statement.

But what if the clothes actually did make a person who they were? In discussing the symbolic importance of clothing in my Pentateuch class this week, our professor shared a rather fascinating study published in 2012 called “Enclothed Cognition” (the study itself is not accessible for free, but you can read about it in a New York Times article here.) Basically, researches gave two groups of graduate students the exact same white coats to wear and asked them to complete a series of cognitive tasks. One group was told that the white coat was a doctor’s lab coat, the other was told that it was a painter’s coat. The results? Those who believed they were wearing a lab coat made half as many mistakes as those who believed they were wearing a painter’s coat!

As the article says, researchers have known for years that the way one looks can affect the way people are perceived and treated. What this study indicates, though, is that the clothing one wears can actually affect one’s image of self, and thus, have an effect on one’s psychological processes and productivity.

I have been a long believer of this, even before knowing the science behind it. In high school, our baseball coach allowed us to wear anything we wanted to practice as long as we had long pants and our shirts represented the school. Almost every player chose to wear sweatpants and an untucked t-shirt. I just couldn’t. I wore baseball pants, high socks, belt, and tucked in baseball shirt, the same things I wore for actual games. To most of them, it didn’t matter what one wore, it was how one played that mattered. Which is true. But at least for me, I knew that how I dressed affected how I played. Besides the obvious practical concerns (sweatpants are more cumbersome than baseball pants) there was a psychological disposition that clothing had on me: in my mind, wearing sweatpants was associated with lounging around and being lazy whereas wearing baseball pants was associated with playing baseball, something that was always done as hard as I could, and helped me focus. Clothing was not an inconsequential external, it was a conscious decision that changed the way I thought about myself and likely affected my psychological disposition.

As someone in religious life, this sort of insight is very interesting to me. While I get the feeling that the issue of wearing a religious habit is completely irrelevant to most people, it is a question that has been hotly contested by priests and religious since the Second Vatican council. Should we wear distinct religious garb? Because there are such strong opinions on either side (about which I have written before), the general conclusion for many is simply to say, “It doesn’t matter what you wear anyway, so wear whatever you want.”

I disagreed with this notion when I played baseball, and now, having learned that there is actual research in this area, have to disagree again. What one wears is not some inconsequential external with no meaning. It is an expression of oneself with significant import. What one wears not only affects how one is treated, it affects the way that we understand ourselves and act in the world. As public figures concerned with the spiritual and physical well-being of all people, called to evangelize and shepherd God’s people, how could this not matter?

But that doesn’t mean I’m calling for everyone to wear their habits and collars. Actually, in what might be the biggest surprise for some people, it’s quite the opposite: I think some people should wear their habits much less. Yeah. Didn’t see that coming, did you? Here’s what I mean. For me, the habit is a positive sign. It symbolizes humility, connects me to the larger tradition and church, allows me to connect with the people of God, and overall, makes me feel good as a pastoral minister. I embody what my clothes mean to me. But what about those friars for which the habit represents something negative, a sign of privilege or a way to separate the laity from ministers? For them, wearing the habit and embodying what it means to them is not going to allow them to be the best ministers they can be. Or, worse yet, what about those people for whom the habit is a sign of privilege and a way to separate the laity from ministers, and they like that about it? What it causes them to embody is extremely detrimental to the faith.

So, I guess the question I have comes down to this: if clothes can actually “make the man,” what sort of man is his religious garb making him into? If what someone wears makes him/her a less effective minister or moves them further from God, it might be time for a wardrobe change.

—

The cover photo is by German artist Herlinde Koelbl in a project titled Kleider Machen Leute (‘Clothes Make The Man’). The subject is Cardinal Müller, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.