On the conflict of physiological and sociocultural drivers of clothing thermal behavior: A narrative review

Clothing choices are a powerful thermal behavior, promoting resilience to challenging environmental conditions and facilitating comfort and performance during exercise. Thermal behaviors are thought to primarily restore thermal balance; however, individual physiology can result in differing thermal preferences and requirements for heat exchange. Additionally, many thermal behaviors (particularly clothing) play wider sociocultural roles which give rise to further opportunity for individual variation. The various factors influencing clothing and thermal behaviors, their interactions, and individual variability remain incompletely understood. This review utilizes parallel convergent physiological and ethnographic searches to explore individual variability in clothing thermal behavior across both physiological and sociocultural characteristics during rest and exercise. Eighteen studies investigated the effect of individual characteristics on thermal behavior. Physiological and ethnographic literature provided contrasting insights into the influence of different characteristics. One laboratory-based study evidenced women exhibiting cool-seeking behavior more than males, whereas a field-based physiological study in a different cultural context showed women to exhibit less cool-seeking behavior and choosing different behavior modalities to males. The interaction of sex and age in the context of workplace thermal behavior was also explored in an ethnographic study where older women described limiting their thermal behavior to minimize impact on others. Triangulation of physiological and ethnographic evidence has identified that physiological and sociocultural drivers of behavior may not always agree. Specifically that an individual might display behaviors that do not restore, or even impede, thermal balance due to motivational conflicts associated with certain interacting characteristics such as sex and culture.