Daily Clothing Selection: Interrelationships Among Motivating Factors

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to test the interrelationships among motivating factors that influence an individual's daily selection of clothes. The motivating factors were classified in two ways. First, they were broken into temporal clothing functions (weather, social activity, practicality, mood, and physical self), and constant factors such as clothing orientation and personality dimensions. Instruments for temporal clothing functions and clothing orientation were developed by the experimentor. Four sub-scales of Shostrom's Personality Orientation Inventory (POI) (Spontaneity, Self-Actualization, Self Regard, and Feeling Reactivity) were adopted for the instrument of personality dimensions. These motivating factors were also classified into exogenous factors (weather, social activity, practicality, and physical self) and endogenous factors (mood, clothing orientation, and personality dimensions).

The final survey, consisting of three major sections, was administered to 105 female students in a midwestern university. Multiple regression analysis, analysis of variance, and Spearman's correlation were used for the statistical analyses.

The results of the statistical analyses indicated that there was a varying degree of correlation between the five temporal clothing functions and the clothing orientation factors. The multiple regression results of the five temporal clothing functions and the four sub-scales of the POI indicated that the coefficients of the "spontaneity" sub-scale were significant for the weather and social activity functions, but not significant for the other temporal clothing functions. Three other sub-scales of the POI showed no bearing on any of the five temporal clothing functions. The multiple regression analysis to test the relationships between exogenous and endogenous factors indicated that mood function (representative of endogenous factors) was significantly influenced (affected) by the weather and physical self functions. The findings in general concur with the presupposition that motivation for clothing selection was multidimensional in its characteristics and the factors were all interdependent.

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