The Tendency to Assume That Attractive People Also Have Other Positive Qualities Is Called What?

Why the Halo Outcome Affects How Nosotros Perceive Others

By Ayesh Perera, published March 22, 2021

Take-home Messages

The halo event, as well referred to as the halo error, is a type of cognitive bias whereby our perception of someone is positively influenced by our opinions of that person's other related traits.
The American psychologist Edward Thorndike first recognized the halo effect with empirical evidence in 1920 in his article, A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings.
The halo result tin shape our perception of others' intelligence and competence, and its influence tin can exist seen in many settings ranging from the classroom to the courthouse.
An example of the halo consequence is the attractiveness stereotype, which refers to the tendency to assign positive qualities and traits to physically attractive people. People often tend to judge attractive individuals to accept higher morality, better mental wellness, and greater intelligence. This cognitive error in judgment reflects i's private prejudices, ideology, and social perception.
The reverse halo effect is the phenomenon whereby positive perceptions of a person tin can yield negative consequences.
The horn effect, which is closely tied to the halo issue, is the cerebral bias whereby one's opinion of another is unduly shaped by a unmarried negative trait.

What is the Halo Outcome?

The halo outcome refers to the trend to allow 1 specific trait or our overall impression of a person, company or product to positively influence our judgment of their other related traits.

The halo consequence is a cognitive attribution bias as it involves the unfounded application of full general judgment to a specific trait (Bethel, 2010; Ries, 2006). For example, if you perceived a person to be warm and friendly, nosotros will attribute a number of other associated traits to that person without any cognition that they are true, such equally they are generous.

The word 'halo' stems from a religious concept. It refers to a circumvolve of low-cal which is placed above or around the head of a holy person or saint in society to award his or her sanctity. Countless paintings from the Center Ages as well as the Renaissance catamenia depict notable men and women with the heavenly low-cal of the halo.

These paintings, in effect, atomic number 82 the observer to class favorable judgments nearly their participants. Likewise, according to the psychological concept of 'the halo effect,' one patent attribute of a certain person leads an observer to draw a generalizing determination about that person (Ellis, 2018).

A single positive quality of a person may induce a positive predisposition toward every aspect of that person while i negative aspect of that person may induce an overall negative impression of that person.

While the onetime which works in the positive direction is the halo effect, the latter which works in the negative management, equally we would discuss later, is called the horn effect.

Examples of the Halo Effect

In the Classroom

In the classroom, teachers are prone to the halo effect error when evaluating their students. For example, a instructor might assume that a well-behaved student is also bright and motivated before they accept objectively evaluated the student's capacity in these areas.

A research study conducted in 1968 by Rosenthal and Jacobson discovered that teachers by and large develop expectations for their students based not merely on the school record but likewise on their physical appearance.

In the experiment, the teachers were provided with objective data such as a kid'southward academic potential forth with a photo of an attractive or unattractive girl or boy. The results indicated that the teachers' expectations concerning the child'due south bookish future were significantly associated with the kid's attractiveness.

Some other more recent study compared the influence of attractiveness on grading in university courses wherein the instructors either could or could not discover the appearance of their students (Hernandez-Julian & Peters, 2017).

The results indicated that appearance could impact grading in traditional classrooms; the students whose attractiveness was rated equally above boilerplate procured significantly lower grades in on-line classes wherein the instructors could not observe the appearance of the students.

In the Workplace

A report past Parrett (2015) examined the impact of beauty on earnings based on the tipping information of restaurants in Virginia. He discovered that more attractive servers earned in tips nearly $1261 more annually than their unattractive counterparts.

The master explanation stemmed from female customers' tipping the meliorate-looking females more than than they did the unattractive females. The customer sense of taste-based discrimination herein mattered more than for females than for males.

Moreover, an investigation into educational attainment and self-evaluations as mediating mechanisms for the impact of attractiveness and intelligence on financial strain and income seemed to point that physical attractiveness could impact income both directly and indirectly (Judge, Hurst & Simon, 2009).

Academics and Intelligence

A written report conducted past Landy and Sigall (1974) demonstrated the impact of the halo effect upon male person judgments of female person academic competence. In their experiment, 60 male undergraduate students were asked to evaluate an essay supposedly written by a first-year female college educatee.

The male undergraduates had to assess the quality of the prose and the competence of the writer on a number of dimensions. The essays included both poorly written samples and well-written versions. Of the 60 male participants, twenty were given a photograph of an unattractive female equally an writer, another twenty were given a photograph of an attractive female as author, and the final xx were provided no photos.

Moreover, while thirty of the participants read the well-written version, the other xxx read the poorly written sample. The results showed that the participants had evaluated the writer to the lowest degree favorably when she was unattractive and virtually favorably when she was attractive.

Furthermore, the effect of the writer's attractiveness on the assessment of her writing was most salient when the objective quality of the essay was poor. These results seemed to imply that that the male readers were more than inclined to tolerate poor functioning by bonny females than by unattractive females.

A more recent written report examined residual cues to intelligence in male and female faces while likewise seeking to command for bewitchery associated with the halo result (Moore, Filippou & Perrett, 2011).

Out of over 300 photos of British college students, pictures of loftier-intelligence composite faces were created from the photos rated the highest in perceived intelligence, and pictures of low-intelligence composite from the photos rated the lowest in perceived intelligence.

And so each group of photos was further divided into male person and female person faces. The participants of the study, which comprised 92 males and 164 females, were to rate the composite faces for attractiveness and intelligence. For the male composites, the loftier-perceived intelligence group was rated equally notably more bonny than their low-perceived intelligence counter parts.

Moreover, the attractive male faces were too perceived to be friendlier and funnier past women as well every bit men. The results seemed to indicate that intelligence might be a crucial component of attractiveness in male person faces.

On Sentencing for Crimes

A study past Michael G. Efran which examined the effects of concrete attractiveness on the judgment of culpability and the severity of the sentences recommended for criminals discovered that bonny criminals were likely to receive more lenient penalties than unattractive ones for the aforementioned offense (Efran, 1974).

According to the study, the societal perception which holds that more attractive individuals have ameliorate prospects for the time to come than less attractive individuals supposedly accounted for this discrepancy.

Another study on the same topic past Sigall and Ostrove, however, demonstrated more nuanced show (Sigall & Ostrove, 1975). The experiment evaluated a hypothetical burglary and a hypothetical swindle. While the sometime involved a adult female unlawfully procuring a primal and embezzling $2200, the latter involved a woman inveigling a man to invest $2200 in a corporation that did non exist.

In the burglary (which was not related to the attractiveness of the criminal), the attractive defendant received a more lenient sentence than the unattractive ane. Nevertheless, in the swindle (wherein the offense was continued to the criminal'south attractiveness), the attractive defendant received the more than severe sentence.

The results seemed to advise that the customary leniency given to the more than bonny criminal was reversed or negated when the nature of the offense involved the criminal'south attractiveness.

The History of the Halo Effect

The American psychologist Frederick L. Wells (1907) first identified the halo effect in a report of ratings of the literary merit of authors.

However, information technology was Edward Thorndike who showtime recognized it with empirical evidence. Thorndike was an early behaviorist who delved into the psychology of learning. He officially introduced the term 'the halo error' in 1920 in his commodity, "A Constant Fault in Psychological Ratings".

Thorndike described the halo event equally the cerebral bias whereby one aspect of a person shapes one's opinions of the other dimensions and features of that person. Although Thorndike initially employed the term only to refer to people, afterward, its use has been expanded fifty-fifty to the spheres of marketing.

In A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings, Thorndike (1920) sought to pivot downwardly this cognitive bias via replication. In the experiment for the study, he would enquire two commanding officers in the military to assess their soldiers based on their intellect, physical qualities (such equally phonation, physique, free energy, neatness and bearing), leadership skills, and personal qualities (such as loyalty, selflessness, cooperation and dependability).

The bias which he idea characterized the ratings was confirmed. Thorndike discovered that a person's attractiveness significantly influenced how that person'due south other attributes were assessed. His study demonstrated notable correlations; the correlation for physique with grapheme was .28, for physique with intelligence was .31, and for physique with leadership was .39.

The ratings were seemingly impacted by a marked tendency to view a person in general as either good or bad, and then to jump to conclusions apropos other qualities of that person. These conclusions were based on the initial impression of, or the general feeling apropos the relevant individuals.

For case, the ratings on one special attribute of an officer would often begin a trend in the ratings in the direction of the perceived special attribute; a positive trait would engender a positive trend, and a negative trait a negative trend.

The final results for a detail soldier would invariably correlate with the residual of the results regardless of whether the special attribute was positive or negative.

The Opposite Halo Effect

The reverse halo upshot refers to the miracle whereby positive perceptions of a person can yield negative consequences (Edward, 2004). Errors in rating may engender problems of validity and reliability.

On the other hand, alterations in ratings may, in fact, reflect bodily transformations in behavior—thereby signaling a mere appearance of compromised reliability. This possibility has been demonstrated by research on both men and women.

An experiment conducted past Joseph Forgas on 246 individuals bears this out. Following the recalling of happy or lamentable past events, the sparticipants were required to read a philosophical essay with an paradigm of either a young female person or an erstwhile male attached every bit the author.

The results showed that those who had recalled sad events, and were therefore, in a negative mood rated lower for the young female. Herein, a negative affect seemed to take eliminated or reversed the halo effect.

Furthermore, enquiry besides shows that both females and males who are more attractive are likely to be more vane and egotistical (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani & Longo, 1991).

Moreover, as noted above apropos the study of Sigall and Ostrove, individuals who commit crimes using their proficient looks to their advantage are more likely to receive harsher penalties than unattractive criminals (Sigall & Ostrove, 1975).

Horn event

The horn effect is essentially the reverse of the halo effect.

The horn effect, a type of cognitive bias, refers to the tendency to brand an overall unfavorable impression of a person, based on one negative trait.

For instance, the horn event may cause us to stereotype that someone who is physically overweight is besides lazy although at that place is no show to indicate that morality is tied to advent.

Most the Writer

Ayesh Perera recently graduated from Harvard Academy, where he studied politics, ethics and religion. He is shortly conducting research in neuroscience and height performance as an intern for the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, while likewise working on a book of his ain on constitutional law and legal interpretation.

How to reference this article:

Prera, A (2021, March 22). Why the halo outcome affects how we perceive others. Just Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/halo-issue.html

APA Fashion References

Burns, 1000., & Griffith, A. (2018). The Learning Imperative: Raising performance in organisations by improving learning. Crown House Publishing Ltd.

Clifford, M. M., & Walster, E. (1973). The effect of physical attractiveness on teacher expectations. Sociology of education, 248-258.

Eagly, A. H., Ashmore, R. D., Makhijani, M. G., & Longo, Fifty. C. (1991). What is cute is good, but…: A meta-analytic review of research on the concrete attractiveness stereotype. Psychological bulletin, 110(1), 109.

Efran, G. Thousand. (1974). The effect of physical appearance on the judgment of guilt, interpersonal attraction, and severity of recommended punishment in a simulated jury task. Journal of Enquiry in Personality, 8(i), 45-54.

Ellis, G. (Ed.). (2018). Cerebral Biases in Visualizations. New York, NY, U.s.a.: Springer.

Hernández-Julián, R., & Peters, C. (2017). Student appearance and academic performance. Periodical of Homo Capital, xi(2), 247-262.

Judge, T. A., Hurst, C., & Simon, L. S. (2009). Does it pay to be smart, attractive, or confident (or all three)? Relationships among full general mental power, physical attractiveness, core cocky-evaluations, and income. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(3), 742.

Landy, D., & Sigall, H. (1974). Dazzler is talent: Task evaluation every bit a function of the performer's concrete attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29(3), 299.

Moore, F. R., Filippou, D., & Perrett, D. I. (2011). Intelligence and attractiveness in the face: Beyond the attractiveness halo upshot. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 9(3), 205-217.

Parrett, M. (2015). Beauty and the feast: Examining the consequence of beauty on earnings using restaurant tipping data. Periodical of Economic Psychology, 49, 34-46.

Ries, A. (2006). Understanding marketing psychology and the halo result. Ad Age, 17.

Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. The Urban Review, 3(1), 16-twenty.

Sigall, H., & Ostrove, N. (1975). Cute only dangerous: effects of offender attractiveness and nature of the criminal offense on juridic judgment. Periodical of Personality and Social Psychology, 31(3), 410.

Thorndike, E. L. (1920). A constant mistake in psychological ratings. Journal of practical psychology, 4(1), 25-29.

Wells, F. L. (1907). A Statistical Written report of Literary Merit.(Columbia Univ. Cont. to Phil. & Psych., sixteen, 3.). Archives of Psychology.

How to reference this commodity:

Prera, A (2021, March 22). Why the halo effect affects how we perceive others. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/halo-effect.html

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