패션의 독특성이 착용자의 창의성에 미치는 영향: 내외향성의 매개된 조절효과를 중심으로

Consumer and employee creativity has become a key success factor for a company’s competitivenessand its value creation, which significantly influence its long-termperformance. Various organizationsstrive for ways to improve customer and employee’s creativity and many marketing researchershave been studying influencers that increase creative outputs (Arthur 1996; George & Zhou2001; Devanna & Tichy 1999; Lee et al. 2013). One potential influencer improving customerand employee’s cognitive flexibility and creative thinking is their fashion style. The world’smost creative companies like Google or Apple have relaxed their office dress-code from formalsuit to ‘cool-biz look’ or ‘business casual.’ Would companies’ easing up workplace dress-code enhancetheir employee creativity? If so, what would be the cognitive mechanism that underlies theeffect of wearers’ fashion on their creativity? Are there any boundary conditions for the effect?Fashion is often referred to as ‘the second skin’ which implies how inseparable the fashion isto the wearers’ self-concept and identity (Finkelstein 1996). Numerous previous researches onfashion have studied fashion style as a consequence and tried to identify different fashionpreference shaped by different predisposition and characteristics of individuals. Customersexpress their fashion preferences by wearing distinct clothes revealing their selves. In contrast,we reverse the causal sequence and study fashion as a cause. Being clothed in particular stylemay alter individuals’ characteristics and influence their ability (Stone 1962, Adam and Galinsky2012, Johnson and Downing 1979). Theories of embodied cognition suggest that physical experiencesbecome schematized and stored in memory, and these particular physical experiences triggerassociated abstract concepts and symbolic meanings (Williams and Bargh 2008, Mussweiler 2006). Just like embodied cognition, the experience of wearing clothes causes individuals toembody the clothing, and activate the associated symbolic meanings (‘enclothed cognition’, Adamand Galinsky 2012). In this research, we show that when individuals wear unique fashion, their creativity increasebecause of activation of the associated symbolic meaning of ‘unique’. In particular, throughthree studies we investigate the influence of “uniqueness of fashion” on “creative cognition andtraits” by showing that wearing unique clothing can alter individual’s creativity. In addition tothat, Study 2 and 3 show that this uniqueness of fashion and creativity relationship ismoderated by ’extroversion – introversion’. Study 3 unveils the mediated moderation role of'extroversion - introversion' which explains the uniqueness of fashion and wearer's creativityrelationship. First, study 1 was set up to examine the direct relationship between uniqueness of fashionand wearer's creativity. 45 undergraduates participated in the study. To measure creativity,we asked participants to engage in a creative idea generation task. They brainstormed for 5minutes and wrote down as many methods to protect the environment as possible (Guilford 1950;Runco 2009; Roskes et al. 2012). We scored the participants’ response to assess their originalityand appropriateness which are the two distinct dimensions of creativity. Following the creativitytask, participants were asked to take pictures of their clothing at the moment and submit it tomeasure uniqueness of participants’ fashion. After all photos were collected, one expert infashion field scored uniqueness of clothing on each photo on the 6 dimensions of fashion (lineand silhouette, color, material, pattern, details, mix and match). Regression yielded a significantpositive effect of uniqueness of fashion on wearer's creativity (For originality: β=.48, p < .05;for appropriateness: β=.45, p < .05). Study 1 is, however, correlational so that it cannotdistinguish the causal directions - whether uniqueness of fashion affected wearer's creativity orcreative individuals have tendencies to select unique clothing. So, we manipulated uniquenessof fashion in Study 2. The second purpose of Study 2 was to show that extroversion-introversionmoderates the relationship between uniqueness of fashion and wearer's creativity. In Study 2, we used 2(uniqueness of fashion: high vs. low) between subjects design to testour prediction. 120 undergraduates were first asked to respond to MBTI (Myers Briggs TypeIndicator) 'extroversion-introversion' items. Then, they were randomly exposed to one of theuniqueness of fashion manipulation stimuli. Participants were asked to imagine wearing thefashion item given to them. After visualizing themselves wearing the fashion item, they wereasked to write down their thoughts and feelings about themselves in the clothing. Finally, they solved 10 items of the Remote Associates Test (RAT:Mednick, 1962) that measured their creativity. A one-way ANOVA revealed that participants in high uniqueness condition solved more RATproblems than ones in low uniqueness condition (Mhign=3.36, Mlow=2.66, F(1,112)=5.95, p <.05). To examine the moderating role of extroversion-introversion, we performed regressionanalysis. As expected, we found a significant interaction effect of uniqueness of fashion×extroversion-introversion on wearer's creativity(β=.15, p < .05). For participants in the highuniqueness condition, extroversion increased wearer's creativity (β=.22, p < .01). For participantsin the low uniqueness condition, extroversion-introversion makes no difference on wearer'screativity(β= -.08, p > .1). We predict that wearing highly unique fashion put individuals on social spotlight, and whenpeople see individuals wearing unique clothing they are likely to hold high expectation for theircreativity. Extroverts tend to enjoy human interactions and try to respond to others’ attention,whereas introverts are predominantly concerned with one’s own inner life. Because extrovertsare more concerned with attention from others than introverts, when they are self-aware ofothers’ expectation to be creative due to the spotlight effect (Gilovich et al. 2000), extrovertswould exhort more creative intent. The wearers’ creative intent enhances creative performance(Marin et al 2013). In Study 3, 77 undergraduates were randomly assigned to either high or low uniqueness offashion manipulation condition. The procedure was similar to Study 2, except that we useddifferent fashion items to manipulate uniqueness and Gough's Creative personality scale(CPS)to measure creativity (Gough 1979). In addition to extroversion-introversion items, participantsreported their Spotlight when visualizing themselves wearing the fashion item on 3 item scales(Gilovich et al. 2000). A one-way ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of the uniquenessof fashion on wearer's creativity (CPS). Participants in high uniqueness condition scoredhigher on CPS scale than ones in low uniqueness condition (Mhign=9.15, Mlow=3.18, F(1,71)=33.15, p < .001). In order investigate moderating effect of extroversion - introversion, regressingCPS scale on the uniqueness of fashion manipulation (high=1,low=0), extroversion-introversionscale(M=-.05, SD=.46, min=-1.00, max=.80), and their interaction revealed a significantuniqueness of fashion× extroversion-introversion interaction (β=4.79, p < .05). To decomposethis interaction, we used the Johnson-Neyman technique to identify the range of extroversionintroversionscale for which the simple effect of the manipulation was significant (Spiller et al. 2013). This analysis revealed that there was a significant positive effect of wearing uniqueclothing on creativity for participants with extroversion score higher than -.64, but not for ones with extroversion score lower than -.64. To establish a mediated moderation effect, we adoptedthe analysis proposed by Muller et al. (2005). First, when we regressed CPS score on uniquenessof fashion, extroversion-introversion, and uniqueness of fashion × extroversion-introversioninteraction, the interaction term was significant (β=4.79, p < .05) indicating an overall moderatingeffect of extroversion-introversion. Second, when we regressed Spotlight on uniqueness offashion, extroversion-introversion, and uniqueness of fashion × extroversion-introversion interaction,the effect of uniqueness of fashion on Spotlight was significant (β=3.34, p < .001). Third, whenCPS score was regressed on uniqueness of fashion, extroversion-introversion, uniqueness offashion × extroversion-introversion interaction, Spotlight, and Spotlight × extroversion-introversioninteraction, uniqueness of fashion (β=5.61, p < .01) and Spotlight × extroversion-introversioninteraction were significant (β=2.43, p < .001). Hence, Spotlight partially mediated the moderatingeffect of extroversion-introversion in the effect of uniqueness of fashion on creativity. Themediated moderation analysis (Muller et al. 2005) supported that uniqueness of fashionincrease Spotlight, and Spotlight enhanced especially extroverted participants’ creativity.