Perceptions of ethicality: The role of attire style, gender, and context

Abstract

Professional attire has traditionally been regarded as a sign ethicality. However, several prominent fraud scandals of the past decades involved CEOs of large public corporations who, despite projecting a professional image, engaged in overly unethical behavior. To determine if these events have rendered the association between professional attire and ethicality obsolete, our research examines, in four different studies, the effects of attire style (i.e., business formal, business casual, casual) on perceptions of an employee’s ethicality. Drawing on gender-role (Eagly, 1987) and expectancy-violation theory (Jussim et al., 1987), we also examine the main effects of gender and context (industry type) on attire-based perceptions of ethicality, and the mediating effects of attire appropriateness in the relation between attire style and our outcome of interest. We find that, compared to business formal and business casual attire, casual attire is perceived as the least ethical style across all four studies. The influence of attire on perceptions of ethicality was robust regardless of industry. In one study, both men and women rated women as more ethical. Lastly, the effect of attire style on perceptions of ethicality was fully mediated by perceptions of attire appropriateness. Theoretical and practical implications, study limitations, and future research are discussed.