• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.11-18
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• 2024

Purpose: This research examines how people react to nonconforming behavior such as entering a luxury boutique wearing gym clothes rather than an elegant outfit or wearing red sneakers in a professional setting. Nonconforming behaviors, as costly and visible signals, can act as a particular form of conspicuous consumption and lead to a positive inference of status and competence in the eyes of others. Research design, data, and methodology: A series of studies demonstrate that people confer higher status and competence rather than conforming individuals using 2-way ANOVA through employees in luxury stores and students at university. Results: According to the empirical studies, observers who witness the nonconformity behavior have positive inferences of status and competence rather than conformity behavior. These positive inferences derived from signals of nonconformity are moderated by individual differences in prior knowledge and regulatory focus. Conclusions: Through three empirical studies, observers who witnessed role-breaking in prestigious and professional situations found that the individuals who performed the nonconformity behavior had higher status and competence rather than conformity behavior. Even in Korea, a collectivist culture, observers who witnessed nonconformity behavior showed that they gave higher evaluations to the people who behaved informally.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.41 no.9
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• pp.1-16
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• 2003

This study examined the clothing behavior in terms of creativity, individuality and conformity. The subjects were 317 boys(mean age: 18) and 312 girls(mean age: 18) in third grade of high school, in which were situated at north and south part of Han-River in Seoul. They were administered with the following questionnaires to measure the attitudinal and behavioral conformity, creativity, individuality, clothing conformity, clothing nonconformity, clothing confidence, aesthetic sense, clothing importance, fashionability. Results indicated that (1) high school students who have high creativity showed higher scores in clothing nonconformity, clothing confidence, aesthetic sense, clothing importance than those who have low creativity. But there were no significant differences between two groups in clothing conformity and fashionability(p<0.001). (2) High school students who have high individuality showed higher scores in clothing conformity clothing, nonconformity, clothing confidence, aesthetic sense, clothing importance and fashionability than those who have low individuality(p<0.001). (3) Students who have low attitudinal conformity showed higher scores in clothing nonconformity, clothing confidence and aesthetic sense(p<0.001) and lower score in information and norm specific clothing confirmity(p<0.05) than those who have high attitudinal conformity. And those who have high behavioral conformity showed higher score in clothing confirmity than those who have low behavioral confirmity(p<0.05). From these findings, we could find that the importance of creativity and individuality was greater than that of conformity in clothing behavior. These results were discussed and following studies were suggested.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.227-235
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• 1992

The purpose of this study was to identify the variables influential on Normative Clothing Conformity, Identificational Clothing Conformity, Clothing Anticonformity, and Clothing Independence. Four clothing-related variables (importance of clothing, confidence of clothing, recognition of clothing norm, and perceived risk of clothing), two personality variables (confer-mistic character and self-esteem) and six demographic variable (sex, age, years of education, job, income, and length of career) were included in the analysis. The responses of 714 fulltime employeed subjects from four different cities were analyzed. Business wear was used as the situational stimulus. As the results, career people conformed more identificationally when they felt clothing was important, had conformistic character, had low self-esteem, and felt psychological risk of clothing. They conformed more normatively when they felt social risk of clothing, recognized the clothing norms of the fim, had confoirnistic character, and recognized the clothing norms of the society. They anticonformed more when they felt clothing was important, were female, did not have conformistic character, had confidence of clothing, and felt less performance risk of clothing. And they acted more independently in clothing behavior when they had confidence of clothing, did not have conformistic character, felt peformance risk of clothing, and felt less social risk of clothing.