• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.32 no.12
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• pp.1857-1865
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to examine the importance of personal attributes as they related to developing first impressions and managing group acceptance in the context of sorority recruitment process. Specifically, we examined how certain personal characteristics of a sorority member were related to her use of a potential member's clothing and appearance as non-verbal cues during the member selection process. The characteristics identified through the literature review were materialism, fashion clothing involvement, and proximity of clothing to self. A questionnaire was distributed to members of two sorority houses at a southeastern university in the United States. A total of 140 US sorority members participated in the study. The results showed that a member's satisfaction with her chapter, her level of participation, and her length of membership in the chapter had no relation with her tendency to base her member selection on clothing and appearance. However, members' use of clothing and appearance as guiding their member selection decisions was related to other individual characteristics selected for the study(materialism, fashion clothing involvement, and proximity of clothing to self). Fashion clothing involvement and proximity of clothing to self(clothing for acceptance) were most significantly related to clothing-based member selection. Partial correlations were also produced to examine the mediating role of clothing-based impression formation.