Brits may roll their eyes at 'Keep Calm and Carry On' but here's

why they secretly love it

"Keep calm and carry on" is to Brits what "I heart NY" is to New Yorkers.
The phrase is plastered on every printable surface and remixed hundreds of ways.
Bring it up in conversation with a Brit and you'll probably be met with an eye-roll as
noted in Fraser McAlpine's new book, "Stuff Brits Like."
But McAlpine, who lives in Cornwall, says the British secretly love the phrase because of
its history.

Year: 1939
The phrase originated as a slogan in the spring before World War II. Anticipating the dark
days ahead, the British government designed a poster to hang in areas being targeted by
German bombers.
Around 2.5 million copies were printed, but not one of them was posted, as officials had
last-minute doubts about whether the content was too patronizing or obvious. They also
couldn't settle on an appropriate time to hang the posters. Save for a select few, the
majority of the posters were destroyed.

Year: 2000
Fast-forward six decades and one of the remaining posters was discovered by a
bookseller who bought a box of old books (where the poster was hidden) at auction.
It was put up over the cash register in the seller's bookshop, Northumberland's Barter
Books.
Pretty soon, customers were asking about where they could buy a similar poster, and the
shop's owners, Stuart and Mary Manley, decided to print copies. Little did they know how
fast the "Keep Calm" craze would spread.

Why Brits actually love the phrase

In his book, McAlpine breaks down the phrase, further explaining why the British have
grown to love it.
There is something quintessential in the way the posters do not say "Don't Panic" or "We
Will Prevail"... They say "Keep Calm," and what that means is, "We may be suffering
something of an invasion at the moment, but that's no reason to start acting in a rash and
hot-headed manner. We may be a subjugated nation temporarily but we are not
about to start acting like savages."

And what of the "Carry On?"... As a nation, we have been trained to look past the bad
behavior of our rudest guests, especially the uninvited ones, and rather than cause a
scene, we shall just go about our daily business as if nothing has happened.

The slogan, in its purest form, is a symbol of nationalism. While the British may loathe its
exploitation, they adore "Keep Calm" for its historical roots.

The Psychological Case Against Casual Fridays

I used to work with a guy who refused to let his sartorial standards drop just because it was
nearly the weekend. Instead of Casual Fridays, he tried to institute its opposite: Fancy Fridays.
This did not exactly catch on widely in the office, and yet he mightve been onto something.
A recentpaper in Social Psychological and Personality Science argues in favor of dressing up,
finding that when people felt more formally dressed as compared to their surrounding peers,
they tended to think more creatively.
The psychological meaning of clothing is something academics have been curious about for
more than a century, particularly the influential Harvard psychologist William James,
who believed the clothes you wear ranked just under your physical body, but above your
immediate family, in contributing to your understanding of who you are.
And modern research has borne this idea out, suggesting that clothes indeed influence selfperception. People who feel dressed-up are more likely to think of themselves as competent
and rational; in contrast, those who are dressed casually tend to describe their personality
accordingly, as friendly and laid-back. Recently, a team of researchers from Columbia
University and California State University, Northridge, took this idea a step further and
conducted a series of five experiments that suggest the clothes we wear dont just influence
the way we think about ourselves; they also seem to influence the way we think, period.
Specifically, they found that people who felt more formally dressed than the people around
them were more likely to think abstractly. And by that we mean, basically, holistic or bigpicture thinking so not focusing on the details but seeing bigger ideas, seeing how things
connect from a more high-level perspective, said Michael Slepian, first author on the
newpaper, which was recently published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.
In one experiment, for example, Slepian asked college students to come to the lab with two
sets of clothing: an outfit theyd wear to a job interview, and an outfit theyd wear to class.
(These were college students, so even the formal clothing they brought wasnt too fancy
more like business casual, Slepian said while the casual outfits tended toward shorts and
flip-flops.) Some of the students were told to change into their interview clothes, and others
were told to change into their casual ones. Both groups then answered two questionnaires, the
first one asking them to rate how formally dressed they felt in comparison to the other
students. The second was meant to determine their cognitive-processing style, asking them
whether a given item fit within a particular category. For example, abstract thinkers again,
these are people who are more focused on the broader, bigger picture would be more likely
to answer that, sure, a camel could belong under the vehicle category; concrete thinkers, on
the other hand, would disagree, sticking to a stricter definition of the category.

As Slepian and the rest of the research team suspected, those whod been asked to wear their
formal clothing were more likely to give answers indicating abstract thinking, something that
can be explained in a couple of ways. One, being more formally dressed than those slobs
around you probably makes you feel a bit surer of yourself, which, in turn, might make you
feel more in control, or more like a leader.
And when people feel powerful, theyre more likely to engage in abstract thinking,
previous research has shown. It also just makes intuitive sense, Slepian said. Someone who
is a leader has a big picture of where they want their team to go, what they want their team to
be working on, he explained. They have the big picture, and they have to figure out how to
implement it. Thats why power leads to abstract thinking when youre in a position of
power, you dont have to focus on the details.
It also could be something about the novelty of dressing up, if its something youre not used
to (like if, for instance, youre a college student). In that case, perhaps the effects would wear
off over time if you started dressing more formally as a habit. This isnt something the
researchers tested explicitly for, but Slepian said he buys it as a valid alternative explanation.
But does it work the other way around, in that dressing like a slob reduces your ability to
think big picture? (A question I am personally interested in, as I started writing this post while
clad in gym shorts and a T-shirt I got for free at a race last year.) Slepian wont go that far, as
thats not what the data showed, but he did admit that since working on this research project,
hes stepped up his own wardrobe a bit. When I work at home, I maybe dress a little nicer
now, he said.