Nautilus

Yes, It Matters What You Wear to an Exam

The formality of clothing might not only influence the way others perceive a person, and how people perceive themselves, but could influence decision making in important ways through its influence on cognitive processing style.Photograph by John Chillingworth / Getty Images

n May 2015, an official vote was held by the Oxford University Student Union about clothing policy. It was over whether to keep “subfusc,” a traditional uniform dating back to the mid-seventeenth century—comprised of a dark suit or skirt, black shoes, white shirt, and a white or black bow tie or ribbon—mandatory for exams. The vote was overwhelming: Over seventy-five percent of Oxford students wanted

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Nautilus

Nautilus3 min read
Archaeology At The Bottom Of The Sea
1 Archaeology has more application to recent history than I thought In the preface of my book, A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks, I emphasize that it is a history of the world, not the history; the choice of sites for each chapter reflects
Nautilus13 min read
The Shark Whisperer
In the 1970s, when a young filmmaker named Steven Spielberg was researching a new movie based on a novel about sharks, he returned to his alma mater, California State University Long Beach. The lab at Cal State Long Beach was one of the first places
Nautilus5 min read
The Bad Trip Detective
Jules Evans was 17 years old when he had his first unpleasant run-in with psychedelic drugs. Caught up in the heady rave culture that gripped ’90s London, he took some acid at a club one night and followed a herd of unknown faces to an afterparty. Th

Related Books & Audiobooks