Is George Clooney a kind person? I guess, most of my lady readers
will answer “Yes”. However, there is no solid base for this answer in the sense
that very likely none of my lady readers have interacted with Mr. Clooney in a
context that would allow them to correctly evaluate his kindness.
Probably one of the oldest judgment
biases identified is the Halo Effect.
It was discovered by Edward Thorndike in 1920. The main idea behind the halo effect is that our evaluation of one
trait such as physical attractiveness spills over other unrelated attributes
such as intelligence or kindness.
The psychological mechanism
behind the halo effect is a mixture of
heuristics. When evaluating, for example, someone’s intelligence, the
correct question to answer is “What is this person’s IQ?”. However, this
question is hard to answer in the absence of the result of an IQ test score. At
the same time, it is easy to see if someone is attractive. Here is where
attribute substitution occurs. We believe that good looking (attractive) people
are more intelligent.
The affect heuristic is the most relevant one when it comes to the halo effect. When asked if someone is intelligent (which is
hard to answer), we tend to give the answer to the unrelated question of “Do I
like this person?” which is easy to answer. However, the halo effect and the
affect heuristic are distinct.
The halo effect has a reverse also known as the “Devil effect”. In
essence people who are evaluated negatively on one trait are perceived
negatively on other unrelated traits.
The halo effect has implications
on aspects of life more significant than the kindness or intelligence of movie
stars. For example in human resources
management, particularly in recruiting, the halo effect might occur.
Professional recruiters are trained to correct for things such as physical
attractiveness. At the same time, in absence of a very well structured “ideal
candidate” profile, the halo effect may occur with a starting point (trait)
other than good looks. For example, a person can score high on relevant work
experience, but if the profile does not specifically include “self-management”
abilities or “taking responsibility”, the recruiter might simply imply that the
candidate scores high on these traits too.
The halo effect occurs in marketing related aspects. For example
good looking cars are perceived as reliable even if there is absolutely no link
between the two. If you don’t believe me, try Alpha Romeo…
Another instance of the halo
effect in marketing is not at the product level, but rather at the portfolio
level. For example, if one company produces a high end product, then people
will infer that other products from the same company will have similar
qualities as the high end one.
The halo effect is a very good illustration of how we tend to make
judgments about unrelated aspects of a person, product, company, country etc.
Some traits are correlated and the halo effect is useful, but more often than
not it occurs when aspects are not correlated.
This post is documented from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
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This post is documented from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
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