Dion et al. (1972)

What is the halo effect?

• Defined as the tendency for an impression created in one aspect to influence other unrelated aspects

• For example, this means that a person's physical beauty influences our judgement with regard to their other qualities. (beautiful people must be good people)

Aim

To investigate whether physically attractive people, both male and female, are assumed to possess more “socially desirable personality traits” than unattractive people. 

• In other word, would attractive people be assumed to be better partners, parents, and more successful in the job market than unattractive people

Methodology

laboratory experiment

Participants

• 30 males and 30 females students from an American university

Procedure

• The participants were told that the researchers were carrying out a study of “accuracy in people perception” and that they were being compared to graduate students who had been trained in “people perception”.

• Each participant was given 3 envelopes: one contained a photo of someone their age that was physically attractive, another was of moderate attraction, and one that was considered unattractive. 

• Half of the participants were given photos of the same gender and the other half were given the opposite gender. 

  • To determine the level of attractiveness, 100 students from the university were asked to rate the attractiveness of 50 yearbook photos of people of the opposite sex. 

• 12 different sets of photos were used for the study

• the sets of photos, the gender received and order in which they were to be were all randomly allocated

• Participants were asked to rate the person in the photo on 27 personality traits on a 6-point scale

• Afterwards, they were asked to complete another survey in which they were asked which person would be the most likely (and least likely) to experience marital happiness, parental happiness, and overall happiness.

• Finally they had to indicate which of the 3 people would be most likely to engage in 30 different occupations. 

  • The occupations were divided into “low status”, “average status”, and “high status”

• Participants were debriefed.

Results

• Attractive individuals were predicted to be significantly happier, more successful, and also have more positive personality

• However, they were not predicted to be better parents

Strengths

Construct validity

• researchers took measures to support the construct validity "attractiveness" by having a sample of 100 students from the sample university population rank photos for attractiveness

Practical Applications

• Efran (1974) found subjects were more lenient when sentencing attractive individuals than unattractive ones, even though exactly the same crime was committed

Limitations

Use of deception

• ethically problematic

• although it was necessary to avoid demand characteristics

• In debriefings, the participants indicated that they did not know the actual aim of the study

Questionable Ecological Validity

• High ecological validity when it comes to predicting how we would judge someone we meet online or when reading through job applicants’resumes.

• However, it is questionable how predictive the results are of real-life encounters between people
  

Reductionist

• the emotional state of the person making the judgement may influence the influence of the halo effect
  

Low Reliability

• replication of the study have been inconsistent

• Demer & Thiel (1975) challenges the reliability of the findings.

  • found that unattractive undergraduates did not rate attractive individuals as highly

  • More attractive individuals of both sexes were expected to be higher in vanity and possible egoistic

• The cognitive arguments do not rule out biological arguments and may only support them.