Study examines ties between high-heel height, income
It’s been the summer of stilettos in the Steel City, thanks to The Frick Pittsburgh’s highly anticipated “Killer Heels: The Art of the HighHeeled Shoe” exhibition on display in Point Breeze through Sept. 4.
But heeled shoes are more than just a way to make a fashion statement or something to gush over in a museum. Jeff Galak, associate professor of marketing in Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, is the primary investigator for the study “Trickle-down preferences: Preferential conformity to high status peers in fashion choices,” which was recently published by the peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS ONE.
The research examines the height of women’s heels in relationship to the income levels in their respective cities — and whether those preferences
changed when women moved someplace with a significant jump or decline in median income. By looking at more than 16,000 purchases by 2,007 women in 180 cities made over five years, they found that there is indeed a connection.
For instance, 86 percent of women who moved from Mobile, Ala., to New York City, where the median income is $45,000 more, tended to opt for shoes with heels more than an inch higher than they did before relocating. Likewise, data showed that when women moved from New Haven, Conn., to Minneapolis — a $25,000 drop in median income — heel heights dropped, too. In Pittsburgh’s case, because its median income is “middle of the road,” heel heights tended to stay fairly consistent for women who settled here.
So, what’s the significance of this? It’s the first large-scale demonstration of the tension between psychological conformity and consistency for women, Mr. Galak says. In other words, it’s a look at the tug and pull between people’s decisions to conform to societal norms and pressures or stick with their own habits.
“We got the ability to study two things that are fundamental human behaviors, and we can study them together as opposed to in isolation.”
Kurt Gray, an assistant professor in psychology at the University of North Carolina; Nina Strohminger, a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Management; and independent researcher Igor Elbert co-authored the study.
The study came about rather serendipitously, Mr. Galak says, when a retailer came to them seeking someone to study purchasing data it had collected so it could learn more about its customers. In return, the researchers could use the information, which included spending patterns for all kinds of clothing and accessories, for a project of their own.
They decided to focus on shoes because a person’s footwear preferences are highly visible to the public, and heel height is something that can be tracked numerically. For other items, such as handbags, there are too many variables to consider (color, texture, strap type, etc.), most of which aren’t easily translated into numbers.
Their findings were in line with what they predicted, Mr. Galak says. Now they’re hoping to find other ways to test them.
“One of the things we’d love to know is how generalized this is,” he says. “We’d like to think that this is more than just about shoes, but it’s hard to know until we can test it with other concepts.”