The effect of attire attractiveness on students’ perception of their teachers

INTRODUCTION: Generally, people do judge a book by its cover. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of teachers’ attire on students’ perception of 34 psychological dimensions. METHODS: The research is an experiment, with self-reported data, in groups, based on a questionnaire. The participants were 173 students (M(age) = 12.16, SD = 1.74) from Suceava, Romania. Two groups of students were asked to listen to a sample lesson of a therapeutic story, narrated by a teacher. One group was given a picture of the attractive teacher and the other group a picture of the unattractive teacher, and were told that the teacher who is narrating is the teacher in the picture. After listening to the same story, the respondents had to answer a questionnaire about teachers’ personality and characteristics. RESULTS: The results indicated that when the teacher is perceived as being more attractive, the students have a greater openness for school activities, the evaluation of the teacher’s personality is more positive, the evaluation of the teaching effort is more positive, students expect a higher grade, and the perceived age of the teacher is lower. DISCUSSION: The article underlines the role of clothing in molding student’s perception and raises questions about dress codes in schools. Implications for school context are discussed.