When I worked tech support, I asked this same question of my management. The answer was professionalism. The same reason why most interviewing experts or interviewing articles will tell you to put on a tie for a phone interview: the way you dress influences the way you comport yourself. Doing professional tech support requires a professional behavior that a t-shirt and jeans won't bring about. This might be different if you're doing tech support for a valley start-up.
I don't have studies, but perhaps I can explain why people believe it and why I think it's plausible.
I am betting that the reason you doubt it is that it doesn't work for you, because you don't have the right associations with business attire. The effect is psychological, so it only works if you have the right prejudices. Personally, I associate suits and such with superficiality, paralysis, and unproductive rule-following. I associate relaxation with high performance and dishevelledness with focus. That reflects my background, though: I grew up in an academic household, idolizing rumpled intellectuals like Einstein and Turing. Apparently, it's more common to associate business attire with hard work, focus, and diligence and to associate relaxation and informality with goofing off. It might be strange to others, but wearing shorts automatically puts a lot of people in a mindset to slack off, and a tie does the opposite. I know one guy who puts on a tie every day for the same reason a programmer might dim the lights and put on headphones: to get focused and keep his head where it belongs. Taking the tie off is like the buzzer at the end of a game. He pushes hard and maintains focus until the tie comes off, and then poof, his mind is gone, moved on to family, dinner, and whatever games will be on TV that night. Even if I don't share that mentality, it sounds like it's useful to him.
Also, keep in mind that while some highly motivated people resent business wear because we dislike the conflation of social presentation and performance, many people hate business wear because they do conflate social presentation and performance, and business attire makes them feel obligated to focus and perform, which they do not enjoy doing. Even if we make common cause with such slackers, we should keep the difference in mind ;-)
That's funny. You know, thinking about it that way, I thought about what mode of thinking I get into when I put on ties. And to be honest, I can only think of ties for fancy parties these days. A good tie can make me feel like a million bucks paired with the right shirt and suit, whether I'm dancing to at someone's wedding, volunteering at some black tie charity event, or applauding speeches at some annual company bash. So when I put on a tie, I guess the theme song that would pop up is not Eye of the Tiger, but I Got a Feeling. :)
Anecdata here, but I've been wearing a tie for a few years, and while I don't think it has changed my behavior much, it definitely changes how other people treat me.
It's actually a little creepy how that one little difference of putting on a tie changes other people's behaviors in so many tiny daily interactions. Things like: when you approach a door, escalator, getting in and out of elevators, people let me go first. People are definitely nicer to me, cashiers smile more, etc. It's noticeable, and a little weird.
We're conditioned from a young age to respect the tie. So, it's not crazy to think that forcing everyone to wear ties in an office will make them a little nicer to each other. I do think it affects people at a subconscious level.
I don't believe it's just about how your comport yourself to clients, but also to establish a hierarchy and pecking order within the organization itself.
The employer may feel that the caliber of people they are hiring requires a very strict, by-the-books mode of operation, and forcing uniforms of people goes a long way towards showing who's in charge, and enforcing discipline.
Yes, but I'm sure you crawled with a more professional deportment. I can tell, even now, at a much later date, and a location indeterminate to that of the crawling.
People want to match their behaviour with their attitude. Usually we think behaviour follows attitude, but if behaviour is constrained in some way, people tend to warp their attitude to fit the behaviour. That's one of the arguments for dress codes in the workplace, it puts you in the role, and also explains why you feel happier when you smile, etc.
Also, we sound subtly different when smiling, it's a bio-physical thing too, not just a manifestation of psychological state. I believe most people can actually detect if the person on the phone is smiling or not.
