Dress for success . . . or at least for less disrespect
Tomorrow, you have an interview for a new job. Your only nice-looking shirt is stained.
YOU:
Buy a new shirt at Goodwill so you make a good impression. Lose money asset
Get as much of the stain out as you can and hope it works and is dry in time for your appointment. Lose time & energy asset
(gettin’ by game scenario taken from the real life of an hourly worker in the U.S.)
For a job interview, you want to look your best, but for a doctor’s appointment? Dressing up for medical care might not occur to higher-income people but low-income and Black people, in a recent California study, reported carefully choosing their clothes, words, and manners – all in hopes to, as one respondent said, “protect [themselves] from being treated unfairly.” Almost a third said they pay special attention to how they dress; 35% modify their speech or behavior to put doctors at ease. (Kaiser Health News has an excellent summary of the study.)
Though medical care does not play a big role in health status^, a person who needs medical care needs it no matter whether their clothes are clean or dirty. That we humans judge others’ appearance is not surprising; it’s a shortcut our brains use all the time. That these judgments interfere with what medical care a person gets is a short step from horrifying.
Low-income patients report distrust in medical providers. People who distrust the health system are more likely to report having poor health. (Nifty, simple study on this topic.) If you do not trust the doctor who won’t make eye contact with you, you probably do not trust the advice and medicines they recommend either.
Fabric is one of the nine evidence-based F’s that gettin’ by training addresses. For example, a well-intentioned professional may encourage someone to take advantage of a food pantry or a health clinic. And the person may avoid going, even if they could benefit from the food or clinic, dreading the poor treatment.
Disrespect may be subtle like the food pantry volunteer silently double-checking that a person has only the allotted number of bags. Or it can be so blatant that it literally knocks you over. Donna Beegle recently posted that her daughter was physically removed from a store on suspicion that she was going to steal things. According to the store manager, her clothes (which were not dirty) were the telltale sign.
The human brain will keep working the way it does, which includes a quick scan and assessment of other people. It’s evolved to do this. Being aware of and slowing down these brain shortcuts is the first step to relating differently to one another.
^Medical care’s small role may seem counterintuitive, but it is simply crowded out by many other things such as being treated respectfully at work or having a sense of agency over one’s day and home. For example, a person’s boss creates the environment for half his waking hours; this has much more influence over a person’s health than medical care.
