Man’s Uniform and Receptivity of Women to Courtship Request: Three Field Experiments with a Firefighter’s Uniform

Three experiments were conducted with male-confederates wearing or not a firefighter’s uniform. In the first experiment, male confederates smiled to young women whereas in the second experiment male-confederates said “hello” to young women in the street. The results shown that’s women smiled more favorably and more openly and said “hello” more favorably to the firefighter. In the third experiment, male-confederates asked young-women in the street for their phone number. Results shown than women agreed more favorably to the request of the firefighter. Variations in the person-perception of the solicitor according to the presence versus absence of uniform were used to explain theoretically our data.