Halo effect

This article is about cognitive bias. For other uses, see The Halo Effect.

The halo effect (sometimes called the halo error) — a term coined by Edward Thorndike — is the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, country, brand, or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings of a person, company, country, brand, or product in another area. It is "the name given to the phenomenon whereby evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality;" in other words, it is a cognitive bias that can prevent people from forming an image based on the sum of all circumstances at hand.

A simplified example of the halo effect could be when people, after noticing that an individual in a photograph is attractive, well groomed, and properly attired, then assumes — using a mental heuristic based on the rules of their own social concept — that the person in the photograph is a good person. This constant error in judgment is reflective of the evaluators' preferences, prejudices, ideology, aspirations, and social perception.

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