Why are detectives always shown to wear a hat?

Have you ever wondered detectives are shown in movies and described in stories to be wearing hats? Remember Sherlock Holmes movies and stories where the wears various types of hats? Of course we do know and remember.

What is the reason detectives are shown as wearing hats? Is it a fashion statement? Is it the way to express intelligence? No. Far from that. To answer this question, I would first like to ask a question based on a very usual real life observation. Have you ever kept food on a plate in your table and covered it with something in such a way nothing can be seen what it is inside the cover? I think many of us would have observed this. Now suppose you keep another place with exactly the same food in it but keep it open without any cover or any kind.

The visitor or the person who sees the two things in the table will immediately try to uncover what is inside the cover. Why does he do that? Because its common human psychology that anything which is hidden from the vision in a supposedly deliberate way, must be something special and curiosity develops in this way.

In the same way the hat covers the human mind. It gives a natural feeling of curiosity to the audience seeing it or reading the story where such a thing is described. It makes the audience think "something special is inside the mind of the detective". This thought happens so spontaneously that its hard to define or capture when it happens.

Next time you come across such a scene in any movie or read about it in a story, please observe this and leave your comments anyway...