• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.990-1001
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of perceiver's gender, clothing, and hairstyle on the visual evaluation of men's professionalism and preference. A quasi-experimental method by questionnaire was used. The experimental design was a $2\times8\times2$ (perceiver's gender $\times$ clothing $\times$ hairstyle) factorial design by 3 independent variables. The stimuli were 16 photographs of a man in his twenties. The upper clothing of the man included tailored collar jackets in beige and dark blue colors, and jumpers and sweaters in beige, dark blue, and red colors. The lower clothing of the men included jean pants. Two types of the hairstyles included short hair and medium length hair. The subjects were 208 men and 223 women in Seoul, Korea. Wearing a beige sweater with jean pants was evaluated high in intellectual image, a red jumper was perceived low in intellectual image, and a beige tailored collar jacket was evaluated low in potent image. Men's short hairstyle was evaluated to be more professional than the medium length hair. Male perceivers liked short hair more than medium length hair, but female perceivers evaluated both hairstyles similarly. In the case of women, the preferences of tailored collared jacket and soutien collared jumper were similar, but jumper was preferred to jacket in the case of men. Male perceivers showed more positive feedback towards jean pants with soutien collared jumper than jeans with tailored collared jacket, which indicated that men showed more conservative attitude towards the outfit than women. The man who was wearing a jumper with short hair was evaluated positively and the man who was wearing a jacket with medium length hair was evaluated negatively when the attires were coordinated with jean pants. In conclusion, medium length hairstyle with a beige jacket and short hairstyle with a red sweater were evaluated as professional image; and the results indicated that clothing and hairstyle interact with each other and influence the evaluation of professionalism.