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The psychologist Ellen Langer once had subjects engage in a betting game against either a self-assured, well-dressed opponent or a shy and badly dressed opponent (in Langer’s delightful phrasing, the “dapper” or the “schnook” condition), and she found that her subjects bet far more aggressively when they played against the schnook. They looked at their awkward opponent and thought, I’m better than he is. Yet the game was pure chance: all the players did was draw cards at random from a deck, and see who had the high hand. This is called the “illusion of control”: confidence spills over from areas where it may be warranted (“I’m savvier than that schnook”) to areas where it isn’t warranted at all (“and that means I’m going to draw higher cards”).
I was once a shy badly dressed person who didn’t understand why people kept underestimating him. Now I know.
Shy And Badly Dressed
You know there are a few very highly successful shy and badly dressed people out there. I'm thinking of Warren Buffett, for example. At least back in the days when he first met Katharine Graham. Or Einstein. Are shyness and dress all about signaling? If so, what are these people signaling and why?
Savvy dressing and self-assured vibes though are accepted currency in most human societies. In your own intellectual circles, you do not need to dress up or act self-assured without reason. High intellectual power is a very localized currency. This took me a long while to figure out, but most social interactions were simply social dominance battles of one or the other kind among most but not all people. This has to be so because the human female determines her mating choice based on social dominance hierarchies.
Now having said that, if you were to sit at a high stakes poker table you will see folks dressed as slobs and some of them are quite shy too. I do not think other players regard them as weaklings. Only people low in intellect judge others solely on dressing, I would atleast talk to the guy for five minutes. Self assured sauve dressers are such bores anyways.