A concept · How We Misjudge People · Biases
The Halo Effect
One good trait quietly vouches for all the others.
A candidate is articulate and at ease for the first five minutes of an interview. By the end, the panel rates them highly on judgement, integrity and technical skill, none of which the interview has tested. How did one quality become three? While a company's results are strong, its culture is called bold and its leader visionary. When the results fall, the same culture is called reckless and the same leader arrogant, though nothing inside the building changed. What are we actually measuring when we rate a trait we have no evidence for?
What The Halo Effect means
The halo effect is the tendency for a single salient impression of a person, product or organisation, such as fluency, looks, warmth or success, to colour our judgement of their other, unrelated qualities. We do not hold many separate opinions about someone; we hold one, and it answers to many names. Owning this changes how we assess anything with more than one dimension. We ask which single cue built the overall feeling, and then, trait by trait, what evidence there is that is not that cue. We notice that the first strong impression arrives before the evidence and recruits everything after it. Before, the confident presenter was obviously competent. After, confidence is one data point about presenting and no data at all about the plan, and we go looking for the plan.
The Halo Effect examples: where it shows up
- At work: the structured interview exists because a free-flowing one measures fluency once and reports it under three different headings.
- With money: a company with a rising share price is described as well run, and the same practices are called complacent the quarter the price falls.
- In the news: a sports star or a popular actor is treated as a reliable voice on medicine or politics, on the strength of excellence at something else.
Where it sits
Open to walk. See where The Halo Effect sits on the sky →
Nearest on the sky
- Fundamental Attribution Error
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
- Spotlight Effect
- Dunning-Kruger Effect
- Confirmation Bias
- Loss Aversion
A filled dot marks a star that is already open to walk.
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