Clothing-based discrimination at work: the case of the Goth subculture

Clothing-based discrimination at work induced by belonging to a subculture is not studied in the literature. This paper aims at contributing to fill this gap through analysis of working conditions of the French Goth subculture. Subjects were contacted individually at random for interviews (1-3h each) examined afterwards through statistical, qualitative, and inductive analyses. Nc=18 cases were considered, confirming a clothing-based discrimination mainly favored by two conditions: working with colleagues whose culture is that of the “majority” and being employed in a company of dual type where domination-submission relationships prevail and where professional identities marked by withdrawal are expected by the management. Results suggested that discrimination could proceed of the combination of several socio-psychological mechanisms: a belief that appearances do matter at work, a negative appearance-based judgment biased by “horn effect” and a consecutive task congruent selection moving towards a negative competencies assessment, a resulting confrontational context developed from an opinion task conflict but expressed in terms of aptitude task, making thus vain Goth subjects’ efforts to resolve the conflict.