It’s surprising how much simple movements of the body can affect the way we think. Using expansive gestures with open limbs makes us feel more powerful, crossing your arms makes you more persistent and lying down can bring more insights.
你会惊奇地发现，一些简单的动作会影响我们的思维。比如，张开双臂的动作会让你感到更有力量，交叉双臂抱胸会让你更加坚定，而躺下来则会让你更有洞察力。
So if moving the body can have these effects, what about the clothes we wear? We’re all well aware of how dressing up in different ways can make us feel more attractive, sporty or professional, depending on the outfit, but can the clothes you wear actually change cognitive performance or is it just a feeling?
如果动作会对我们的思维造成影响，那么我们的穿着也会有这样的作用吗？我们都知道，在不同的场合穿不同的服装会带来不同的效果，比如更加迷人、更加运动、或更加职业，取决于所穿服装的不同。那么，服装的不同会对我们的认知表现产生影响吗？还是这只是我们的错觉？
Adam and Galinsky tested the effect of simply wearing a white lab coat on people’s powers of attention. The idea is that white coats are associated with scientists, who are in turn thought to have close attention to detail.
亚当和林斯基做了一项关于人们穿着白大褂对于专注力的影响的实验。其理念是白大褂通常与科学家相关，由此给人一种专注细节的联想。
What they found was that people wearing white coats outperformed those who weren’t. Indeed they made only half as many errors as those wearing their own clothes on the test.
实验发现，穿白大褂的人表现更为出色，他们的错误率比起那些没有穿白大褂的实验人来说只有一半而已。
The authors dub the effect ’enclothed cognition’, suggesting that all manner of different clothes probably affect our cognition in many different ways. This opens the way for all sorts of clothes-based experiments. Is the writer who wears a fedora more creative? Is the psychologist wearing little round glasses and smoking a cigar more insightful. Does a chef’s hat make the resultant food taste better? From now on I will only be editing articles while wearing a white coat to help keep the typo count low.
该实验报告的作者称其为“穿衣认知”，表示不同的服装可能对我们的认知有不同的作用。这就给各种各样的服装实验打开了一扇大门：是不是作家戴上爵士帽就会更有创造力？是不是心理学家戴上圆框眼镜，抽一根雪茄就更有洞察力？是不是厨师长戴了高帽子，餐厅的食物味道就会更好？目前为止，我只能希望，在我编辑文章的时候穿上白大褂，可以使我减少打字错误。
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（责任编辑：郭英杰）
