Trying to decide whether to invest in a pair of brand name leggings or get the ones on sale at your local store? You may be better off ditching both for a pair of loose fitting sweatpants or shorts.
According to a new study from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, wearing tight and revealing outfits over loose and concealing clothing may have a negative impact on your performance.
“There is a long line of literature showing that women wearing tight and revealing clothing perform more poorly on cognitive tasks (like math) relative to women wearing more loose and concealing clothing,” says Timothy Welsh, a professor at KPE and one of the authors of the study published in the June edition of the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. “It is thought that these differences may emerge because the tight clothing activates body image and objectification processes that may shift cognitive resources to the body and away from the task.”
Welsh and Professor Catherine Sabiston, also of KPE, wanted to see if this negative impact of clothing extended to motor performance. Using a sample of 80 women, aged 18 to 35 years, they randomly assigned tight and revealing athletic clothing to some women or loose and concealing athletic clothing to others. All participants completed the same visual-motor aiming task to assess measures of motor performance in time and space. In addition to the clothing, participants were primed to be conscious of their bodies via measurements of height, weight and waist circumference, photographs taken of their bodies, a computerized body size distortion task and a mirror in the testing chamber.
Results revealed that the group of women who wore tight and revealing clothing, such as form-fitting tank tops and short shorts, were less consistent in achieving the visual-motor task and did not improve their performance over time compared to the group of women who wore loose and concealing clothing, such as loose t-shirts and soccer shorts.
“These differences suggest that the style of clothing may influence motor performance in women by reallocating cognitive resources towards the body and away from the motor task at hand,” says Welsh. “The results may also suggest an interesting paradox wherein tight and revealing clothing designed for performance and comfort might actually hinder performance.”
So, in other words, enjoy your brand name leggings, but don’t expect to win a race in them?
“Given the wide variety of athletic clothing available to women for sport and recreation, this study highlights the importance of considering the impact that the style of clothing has on performance. The findings demonstrate the possibility that awareness on the body is disruptive to motor performance in a similar way to cognitive performance” says Sabiston.
“To perform optimally in athletic activities, one must focus on the movements and skills required. When women’s focus is placed on their appearance, cognitive resources are likely divided between motor performance and their bodies. These negative performance and psychosocial responses may in turn prove demotivating for further athletic performance and learning.
The key is to now expand our findings in real-world settings to investigate the potential impact of sport uniforms on performance, a relationship that may partially explain gender differences in some sport outcomes.”
The study was funded by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and co-authored by Elizabeth Cox from the department of psychology at U of T, April Karlinsky, a researcher in the KPE Mental Health and Physical Activity Centre (MPARC), Joseph Manzone, a researcher in the KPE Centre for Motor Control (CMC), and Heather F. Neyedli, from the School of Health and Human Performance at the Dalhousie University.