Psychology of story
In this film, Pak Chiu, a fashion psychologist, co-founder and Research Director of HAJINSKY.com, explores the power of stories in fashion and how they positively and negatively affect our health and wellbeing.
Pak draws on studies into mirror neurons that lead us to, for example, wince when we see someone stub their toe. He also describes how we pick up the narratives of a story in text and images, and how this can be explained by two theories:
- Social learning theory – we learn and internalise values, based on what others care for.
- Cultivation theory – when we see stories on repeat (for example, in the media), we normalise them.
Stories – fashion or otherwise – have an effect on our emotions, wellbeing, health and beliefs. What is unique about fashion is that we wear this meaning on our bodies. Pak refers to this in the context of enclothed cognition – that the symbolic meaning of clothing affects us. For instance, Pak gives us an example of a white laboratory coat that had different perceived meanings when labelled differently.
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