Imagine this: You’re interviewing two people for a job. They’re equally competent, capable, and qualified—but you can see that one is wearing an outfit from H&M and the other’s clothes are clearly from Louis Vuitton. Which candidate will you hire?

They found that in nearly every situation, people gave preferential treatment to the person wearing the luxury logo. The researchers call this effect an example of costly signaling theory, which says that people show off to “signal” to others that they can afford to do so.