Why do positive impressions produced in one area positively influence our opinions in another area?

The 

Halo Effect

, explained.
Bias

What is the Halo Effect?

The halo effect is a cognitive bias that claims that positive impressions of people, brands, and products in one area positively influence our feelings in another area.

illustration of the halo effect

Where this bias occurs

Suppose your boss comes up to you at work and asks if your coworker, Jake, would make a good team leader for an upcoming project. You don’t know Jake all that well, but he’s attractive and dresses nicely, so you assume he’s also intelligent and sociable. Even though you’ve never seen any evidence that Jake would excel in a leadership position, you vouch for him because your positive impression of his appearance influenced your judgment of his other traits and abilities.  

The halo effect is a perception error that distorts how we evaluate people and things. It causes us to generalize from a single positive trait or characteristic to assume the presence of other positive qualities,  resulting in biased judgments. So, when we like one thing about someone, we tend to have a positive predisposition toward everything else about them.
While biases often impact entire groups, the halo effect primarily occurs at the individual level, shaping how we evaluate everything from other people to physical products. For example, if you specifically value one brand of hair care products, you may be likely to evaluate their new line as amazing, even if it has a lot of negative reviews. Let’s take a closer look at some of the main ways the halo effect can impact your perceptions, preferences, and prejudices.

Related Biases

Sources

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  2. Wade, T.J., DiMaria, C. (2003). Weight Halo Effects: Individual Differences in Perceived Life Success as a Function of Women's Race and Weight. Sex Roles 48, 461–465. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023582629538.
  3. Thorndike, E.L. (1920). A constant error in psychological ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 4(1), 25–29. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0071663.
  4. Talamas, S. N., Mavor, K. I., & Perrett, D. I. (2016). Blinded by Beauty: Attractiveness Bias and Accurate Perceptions of Academic Performance. PloS one, 11(2), e0148284. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0148284
  5. Perera, A. (2023, February 8). Halo effect in psychology: Definition and examples. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/halo-effect.html
  6. Using AI to eliminate bias from hiring. Harvard Business Review. (2023, January 18). https://hbr.org/2019/10/using-ai-to-eliminate-bias-from-hiring
  7. Wells, F. L. (n.d.). A mead project source page. F. L. Wells: A Statistical Study of Literary Merit with Remarks on Some New Phases of the Method. https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Wells/Wells_1907.html
  8. Xu, S., Martinez, L., & Smith, N. A. (2019, October 30). The effects of attractiveness, gender and self-esteem in service jobs. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ijchm-02-2019-0127/full/html 
  9. Harari, H., & McDavid, J. W. (1973). Name stereotypes and teachers’ expectations. Journal of Educational Psychology, 65(2), 222–225. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0034978.
  10. TalktoAngel (2024, October 11). Halo Effect and Horn Effect in Relationships. https://www.talktoangel.com/blog/halo-effect-and-horn-effect-in-relationships 
  11. Gulati, A., Martínez-Garcia, M., Fernández, D., Lozano, M. A., Lepri, B., & Oliver, N. (2024). What is beautiful is still good: the attractiveness halo effect in the era of beauty filters. Royal Society open science, 11: 240882. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.240882 
  12. Nicolau, J. L., Mellinas, J. P., & Martín-Fuentes, E. (2020). The halo effect: A longitudinal approach. Annals of Tourism Research, 83, 102938. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2020.102938 
  13. Park, S., Yang, D., Cha, H., & Pyeon, S. (2020). The Halo Effect and Social Evaluation: How Organizational Status Shapes Audience Perceptions on Corporate Environmental Reputation. Organization & Environment, 33, 464-482. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026619858878 
  14. Sinclair, A. Perception’s Illusion: Cognitive Bias Insights from The Halo Effect Social Experiment. Achology. https://achology.com/psychology/perceptions-illusion-insights-from-the-halo-effect-experiment/ 
  15. Kordsmeyer, T. L., Freund, D., Ueshima, A., Kuroda, K., Kameda, T., & Penke, L. (2024). Halo effect of faces and bodies: Cross-cultural similarities and differences between German and Japanese observers. Personality Science, 5 https://doi.org/10.1177_27000710241257814 
  16. Batres, C., & Shiramizu, V. (2023). Examining the “attractiveness halo effect” across cultures. Current Psychology, 42, 25515–25519. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03575-0 
  17. Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). The halo effect: Evidence for unconscious alteration of judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(4), 250–256. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.35.4.250 
  18. Klebl, C., Rhee, J. J., Greenaway, K. H., Luo, Y., & Bastian, B. (2022). Beauty goes down to the core: Attractiveness biases moral character attributions. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 46, 83-97. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-021-00388-w 
  19. Alaei, R., Deska, J. C., Hugenberg, K., & Rule, N. O. (2022). People attribute humanness to men and women differently based on their facial appearance. Journal of personality and social psychology, 123(2), 400–422. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000364 
  20. Travers, M. (2023, October 15). A psychologist explains the ‘pretty privilege’ paradox. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2023/10/15/a-psychologist-explains-the-pretty-privilege-paradox/ 
  21. Westbury, C., & King, D. (2024). A Constant Error, Revisited: A New Explanation of the Halo Effect. Cognitive science, 48(12), e70022. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70022 
  22. Hartung, C. M., Lefler, E. K., Tempel, A. B., Armendariz, M. L., Sigel, B. A., & Little, C. S. (2010). Halo effects in ratings of ADHD and ODD: Identification of susceptible symptoms. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 32, 128-137. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-009-9135-3

About the Authors

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Dan Pilat

Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.

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Dr. Sekoul Krastev

Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.

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