Hajo Adam

Hajo Adam

Organisational psychologist and first author of the 2012 paper that named enclothed cognition.

Who they are

With Adam Galinsky, Adam defined enclothed cognition in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology as "the systematic influence that clothes have on the wearer's psychological processes". A pretest linked the lab coat with attentiveness and carefulness. Wearing a lab coat improved selective attention, and a coat described as a doctor's coat improved sustained attention compared with the same coat described as a painter's coat, and compared with seeing or identifying with a doctor's coat. The paper is listed on the University of Bath research portal.

He was also a co-author of the z-curve and meta-analysis led by C. Blaine Horton, published online in 2023, which raised concerns about early studies in the field and found evidential value in work published after 2015.

Key papers

Adam, H., & Galinsky, A. D. (2012). "Enclothed cognition." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(4), 918-925. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2012.02.008.

Horton, C. B., Adam, H., & Galinsky, A. D. (2025). "Evaluating the evidence for enclothed cognition: z-curve and meta-analyses." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 51(2), 203-221. Published online 2023. doi:10.1177/01461672231182478.

Key ideas

See Enclothed Cognition.

Sources

  1. Adam and Galinsky (2012), abstract read on the University of Bath research portal, 13 October 2026.
  2. Horton, Adam and Galinsky (2025), abstract read on the University of Bath research portal, 13 October 2026.