Physical appearance is the most readily available visual cue in first impression situations and can thus influence the judgments and subsequent behavior of the perciever. Clothing has been singled out by many researchers as a powerful aspect of physical appearance that is highly expressive in nature. However most clothing and first impression studies either have forcefully categorized clothing choices into broad categories (e.g., casual look, sporty look, professional look, etc.) or have been manipulated to best represent the clothing category or self-identity of the wearer. Also, to this day, there has not been any research on the everyday sportswear choices of sports participants and thier communicative aspects. Along these lines, the current study is, based on person perception and social identity theory, an attempt to provide some insight as to the signaling aspects of sportswear as well as how these signals are percieved and interpreted to make first impression judgments by observers. More specifically, the study looks to compare the intentions and human brand personality of sportswear consumers with judgments made by percievers about the social identity, self-identity and personality traits of the wearer in a first impression setting. Repeated Measures of Aanlysis of Variance (ANOVA) was employed to test the differences between self and others perception. Results are discussed, among with the limitations of the study and directions for future research.

• Jisuk Chang(Seoul National University, Republic of Korea)
• Yoon Heo(Seoul National University, Republic of Korea)
• Choong Hoon Lim(Seoul National University, Republic of Korea)