I've not sure if I've mentioned this a lot on the blog or not but for the longest time my goal was to become a family counsellor. Three of my four years in college were working towards attaining my B.A. so I could go on and get my Masters in family counselling. I enrolled in as many psychology courses as I could in college. I was enthralled. But my love of psychology came several years before... in high school. I wasn't a huge fan of my psych teacher in HS but I did appreciate some of her teaching methods. While we were learning about certain topics she would have us go out into our town and do experiments and make observations to report back the next day. One experiment that has stuck with me over the years was based on how we perceive people according to what they look like. We had to go out to nearby stores and find people we didn't know (which wasn't always the easiest thing to do in a small town like ours). We were to observe them for 30 seconds to a minute, write down on a piece of paper what we thought their names were just based on their appearance and how they carried themselves. Then we had to walk up to them and introduce ourselves, explaining the experiment. We then asked them what their names were and compared it to what we had guessed. Of course no one got it right, but it was a fun experiment.
The point behind the experiment stuck with me over the years. I've often had tedious and monotonous jobs so I would often try to do things to make them more interesting or at the very least, make the shifts go by faster. I came up with a few of my own "psychological experiments" that every so often would conduct again. One of my favorite ones to do was based on my appearance and if that changed how people treated me both as an employee and as a customer.
I had three different things I would try:
(1) obvious make-up. By that I mean people could tell I took time on my make-up that day. Particularly I would wear black eye-liner.
(2) a little bit of make-up but not much. Very natural looking.
(3) no make-up at all.
Each time I would observe how people treated me, if it changed from regularly. As an employee, did customers treat me better or worse depending on my appearance? As a customer, did I receive better or worse service depending on my appearance? I did this many times over quite a few years. And the results were almost always the same.
For appearance (1) as an employee people were often more respectful of me. Less likely to get angry and be rude. And instead more likely to make small talk with me while I served them. As a customer I often got better service in places when I took extra time on my appearance that day. The employees were more attentive and friendlier.
For appearance (2) this was basically my thing I measured the other two against. The neutral field if you will.
For appearance (3) these were usually my most negative experiences both as an employee and as a customer. People were in worse moods when they wanted help with something. They were more impatient and likely to be rude. As a customer I found the service less attentive. I had to seek someone and ask for help. There was less likely a time of friendly chit chat.
Now I'm not making any concrete conclusions but the experiments showed that strangers treated me a lot better when I wore more make-up especially eye liner as opposed to no make-up at all. But there's one element that I've always wondered if it played any role in these outcomes... my self-esteem. Maybe it wasn't completely my appearance that changed the way strangers reacted to me, but instead the way I carried myself that influenced them. Perhaps on days I took more time on my appearance it caused me to have a better image of myself, in turn making me act more confident. And days I wore no make-up, maybe that caused me to be more timid and insecure.
I guess I will never know 100% one way or another but sometimes it's fun to objectively observe people and the way they interact with others.
