The Popcorn Stand: Study will knock your socks off

I guess I’m going to have to change my socks.

Generally, I just wear plain white socks or plain color dress socks. Or no socks at all. I hope they never do a study on people who don’t wear socks because I don’t think I would like the results.

So this is a study that may just literally knock my socks off. Harvard Business School did a study that concluded we think people who choose to wear eccentric designed and bold colored socks are more competent and ambitious.

But the study also conclude those who wear wackier socks feel more confident in themselves. So socks with cupcakes and pineapples don’t just have an effect on other people — or make you more hungry — they make you feel smarter as well.

Of course the idea of dress for success is nothing new. Look like you’re important and people believe you’re important. One of my favorite shows as a kid was “What’s My Line?” because the celebrity panelists were suckers every time.

They would always choose the “best” or “most important” looking person when inevitably the right guess was always the person who didn’t look the part at all. The theme of the show always seemed to be you can’t judge a book by its cover.

And the Harvard study was careful to be clear that you can’t always judge people by the socks they wear as wacky socks doesn’t always mean a person is a non-conformist who’s successful. It may just mean the person just likes to wear wacky socks.

Maybe I’ll stick with my white socks, after all.

— Charles Whisnand