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Concept
Halo effect
Summary
The halo effect (sometimes called the halo error) is the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, country, brand, or product in one area to positively or negatively influence one's opinion or feelings in other areas. Halo effect is "the name given to the phenomenon whereby evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality." The halo effect is a cognitive bias which can possibly prevent someone from accepting a person, a product or a brand based on the idea of an unfounded belief on what is good or bad.
The term was coined by Edward Thorndike. A simplified example of the halo effect is a person, after noticing that an individual in a photograph is attractive, well groomed, and properly attired, then assuming, using a mental heuristic, that the person in the photograph is a good person based upon the rules of their own social concept. This constant error in judgment is reflective of the individual's preferences, prejudices, ideology, aspirations, and social perception.
The halo effect is a perception distortion (or cognitive bias) that affects the way people interpret the information about someone with whom they have formed a positive gestalt. An example of the halo effect is when a person finds out someone they have formed a positive gestalt with has cheated on his/her taxes. Because of the positive gestalt, the person may dismiss the significance of this behavior. They may even think that the person simply made a mistake. The person would justify the behavior and connect it with your positive gestalt. The halo effect refers to the tendency we have of evaluating an individual high on many traits because of a shared belief.
It is a type of immediate judgement discrepancy, or cognitive bias, where a person making an initial assessment of another person, place, or thing will assume ambiguous information based upon concrete information. The halo effect is an evaluation by an individual and can affect the perception of a decision, action, idea, business, person, group, entity, or other whenever concrete data is generalized or influences ambiguous information.
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