Informational Social Influence on Clothing Conformity

정보적 영향에 의한 의복동조성 연구

The purpose of the present study was to identify the effects of communicator, type of clothing and subject's age on informational influence in clothing conformity. The sample consisted of 205 subjects assigned to two groups (female college students in their early twenties and housewives in their late thirties living in kyongju). In this study the research design consisted of a 3(communicator)×2(subject's age)×2(type of clothing) factorial design. The stimuli consisted of 10 color photographs (6 one-piece dresses and 4 jeans in current fashion) In the first step, subjects were asked to arrange stimuli in the order of greatest fashionability. In the second step, subjects were exposed to experimental manipulation which consisted of slides of various clothing styles and an essay concerning a forecast on fashion trends. The communicator in the essay was described as a designer, a college student, or a housewife. In the third step, in addition to other questions subjects were asked to indicated their degree of agreement with the essay. The data were analyzed by ANOVA, X2 and t-test. The results were: 1. Informational influence on clothing conformity varied by communicator, type of clothing, and subject's age. Subjects were most conforming when the communicator was described as a designer and when the clothing style was a one-piece dress. 2. Informational influence results revealed that housewives were more conforming than the female college students in the jean style.