Halo effects

Abstract

The halo effect is the tendency to assume that, if a person possesses some known positive characteristics, their other, potentially unrelated and unknown characteristics are likely also to be positive. Much work on halo effects has examined biases in impression formation, especially the “beautiful is good” halo. Halo effects - such as “health” and “green” halos - have also been found in brand perception and consumer psychology. Halo effects in impression formation can create expectations about people and thus lead to potentially harmful fulfilling prophecies. Halo effects appear to be robust to explicit bias reduction, but subtler manipulations that increase systematic thinking seem to have ..