1

The Halo Effect

If people make a certain
judgement about someone in a
specific area, are they more
likely to make a similar
evaluation in other unrelated
areas?

Project Proposal for Analysis in Management Unit 2015

By Sasha Denby, Lucy Eversfield, Oliver Fairweather, and Zhongliang Zhou at

University of Bristol

Table of Contents
Background:
pg.3
Need for the Study:
pg.3
Purpose and aims of the Study:
pg.4

Review of the Literature:

Research Design:

Procedure:
Rationale:
Logistics:
Expected Results:
Limitations:

Timetable of Events:
References:

pg.5
pg.6
pg.6
pg.6
pg.7
pg.7
pg.7

pg.8
pg.8

Background
The Halo Effect is a psychological phenomenon that has been acknowledged for many
years. It is a cognitive bias whereby ones overall impression of a person, influences how one
deduces his or her character. Simply put, it describes the way in which humans assume that
because someone is good at A, they are also good at B. A good example may be if a chef is
prolific at preparing one particular dish, people may then assume that they are equally
proficient at preparing other dishes.
The American psychologist Edward Thorndike was the first to use the term in his paper
titled The Constant Error in Psychological Ratings. In the study, he asked two officers to
rate their soldiers in terms of their physical qualities, then their mental and social qualities;
the findings were extraordinary. He wrote the average correlation for physique with
intelligence is .31; for physique with leadership, .39; and for physique with character, .28,"
(Thorndike 1920). Thorndikes findings opened widespread debate, which led to large
volumes of further studies and research. Several of these studies have found that when we
perceive people as good looking, we will tend to presume that they are more intelligent,
amongst other positive personality traits.
The Halo Effect is clearly something that affects people across a plethora of different
situations. Whether it is the relationship between an employer and employee or an
individuals evaluation of a company based on their marketing strategy; it is a phenomenon
that affects everyone every day.
However, recognition that The Halo Effect has large influences on business and
management has been relatively recent. Phil Rosenzweig argues in his book The Halo
Effect (2007) that peoples opinion on a companys performance is hugely influenced by
The Halo Effect. For instance, when a company is successful, it is easy to assume that it has

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excellent staff, CEO, good business strategy along with other positive business traits. The
opposite can be said when a company is under performing.

Need for the study

We believe that people are wholly unaware of the vast impact of The Halo Effect
throughout society. If apprehension of this cognitive bias is increased, people can begin to
draw incorrect conclusions less frequently.
Despite the common phrase Dont judge a book by its cover, research of The Halo Effect
has shown that this really isnt the case. If people are more aware of The Halo Effect, they
can become more conscious of how they present themselves to others and make greater long
lasting first impressions. This will have positive effects for anybody in every day situations;
particularly affecting people who may be presenting to a group, for example lecturers, people
of authority or in a job interview.
Although this research project is focused on personal conclusions drawn as a result of The
Halo Effect, we will also discuss the connotations that it has on recruitment, management,
marketing, branding and business performance.
The Halo effect is of significance to both management academics and those carrying out
management techniques in everyday life. Management consultants such as McKinsey & Co
recognise that the Halo effect is something to be wary of: In an article published in the
McKinsey Quarterly (2007), it states they look for independent evidence rather than merely
accepting the idea that a successful company has a visionary leader and a superb customer
orientation, and vice versa. This highlights the fact that managers and those advising them
should not be complacent and should look deeper into the details and structures of the
organisation. The example of Cisco Systems is given where its strategy went from being
praised, to criticised as flawed after bad performance, despite there being no real change in
the strategy.
The Halo Effect is applied particularly in marketing which encompasses many schools of
management thought. In his book Reputation Marketing, (2001) John Marconi gives the
example of an identical book being able to demand double the price because it has a Harvard
Classics, endorsement written on the front cover. This demonstrates to an extent, the
implications of the use of the Halo effect on consumers. Celebrities are often used in
marketing campaigns with the assumption that customers will trust their judgement of
product because the celebrity is good looking and talented, therefore also perceived to be
knowledgeable and trustworthy. To academics such as Kotler, this raises an interesting
counterargument to claims that consumers are sovereign and that producers are the servants
of consumers. Our aim in observing subconscious judgements therefore becomes all the more
important as it implies an element of power being held by producers/marketers. Using
Fleming and Spicers four faces of power, (2007), the Halo effect represents a way in which
managers can coerce and manipulate consumers. Companies can use this psychological
phenomenon to their advantage, creating a false faade to nave consumers. Distorting
customers viewpoint of a brand is not only dishonest, but misleading; therefore we believe
that exploited consumers need to have greater awareness of the uses of The Halo Effect in
marketing.
As can be seen, our research is relevant to everybody; ranging from management theorists
to managers, customers, businesses, politicians and all individuals alike, and so in the wider
context, should appeal as an important study.

Purpose and Aims of the Study

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Like Nisbett and Wilson (1977) (on whose experiment our project is based), one of our main
purposes is to answer the question: Do we make subconscious judgements when evaluating
the characteristics of an individual? Although we may be aware of the Halo effect, this does
not make it easy to avoid its influence on our perceptions and decisions. One would think we
could simply recognise these sorts of mistaken judgements by introspecting. The 1977
experiment aimed to investigate this and the results demonstrated Richard Nisbetts
hypothesis that in fact, we have little access to our thought process in general and to the
Halo effect in particular, (PsyBlog 2007). When the students participating in the experiment
were asked why the lecturer had been given higher ratings in one video than the other, they
had no clue whatsoever; it was even suggested that their global evaluation of the lecturer had
affected their ratings of his attributes. However, the students were convinced otherwise. The
purpose of our research is to look in particular at whether our global evaluations about a
person affect our judgements about their specific unrelated traits. We are therefore examining
a causal relationship as part of our objective. We also aim to use this in a wider context, to
recognise the implications the likely results are having on the field of Management study.

Review of the Literature

In 1977, Nisbett and Wilson conducted an experiment to address and find the answer to the
question regarding peoples awareness of the halo effect. As mentioned above they believe
that people have little awareness of halo effect, so much so that it could influence their
personal judgment.
In the experiment, the students were divided into two groups who were going to
watch two different videos of the same lecturer, who is a native Belgian,
speaking English with a noticeable accent. In one of the videos, the lecturer
answered a series of questions in an uninterested and unfriendly manner. The
second group saw the same person answer the same questions in an engaging
and enthusiastic manner. It should be noted that the mannerisms and accent
were kept the same in both version of video. After watching the video, students
were asked to rate the lecturer on physical appearance, mannerisms and his
accent. It was unsurprising that students who saw the warm lecturer rated him
more attractive, his mannerisms more likeable and even is accent as more
appealing. In contrast, they gave the cold lecturer a lower rating, (PSYBLOG
2007). Even though the subjects were told how their liking for the lecturer should
not influence their rating, the result was consistent. Obviously, the students were
influenced by the lecturers attitude, but they were unaware of the halo effect.
Previously in 1972, there had been another experiment to demonstrate the halo
effect. It was conducted by Dion, Berscheid & Walster and aimed to attest the
relationship between attractiveness and the halo effect. According to ArtForgers,
sixty university students were given three different photos to examine: one
attractive individual, one individual of average attractiveness, and one
unattractive individual. The participants were asked to judge the photos subjects
along 27 different personality traits. They were also supposed to predict the
subjects happiness and social status for the rest of their lives. The results
showed that participants overwhelmingly believed more attractive subjects have
more desirable personality traits than the other two subjects. Participants also
believed that attractive individuals would lead happier lives in general.
Furthermore, it was shown that attractive people were believed to be more likely
to hold higher social status.
Even though they both derived the same result, compared with the 1977
experiment, this experiment unilaterally focused on the influence of the halo

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effect on peoples personal judgment. The 1977 experiment explored further
peoples awareness of the halo effect, and whether people would still have bias
after being informed that they should not be influenced by one impression when
judging a subjects entire character. We attempt to look at both of these areas in
our project in order to give us a wider insight into how the Halo effect affects
todays society.

Research Design
Procedure
Two groups of twenty-five people are going to watch one of two videos of a
man describing the famous painting 'The Birth of Venus' by Sandro Botticelli. The
script will be identical for both videos in order to act as a control of the
experiment.
In the first video, the presenter will be engaging with the audience and
describe the painting enthusiastically. He will display a captivating tone of voice.
Whilst in the second video, the same presenter will describe the image in a cold
and lacklustre manner: Not seeming absorbed or involved in what he is
describing to the audience. He will display a dull tone in his voice.
Afterwards, the audience will respond to the video in a survey. In this survey
they will be asked to mark the presenter on how he depicted the painting, under
three categories. These categories are: physical appearance, mannerisms and
accent. The participants will score the presenter on an 8-point scale, a mark out
of 8 for each of the three categories.
We are then going to email randomly selected students from a broad range of
courses one of the videos. The email will instruct them to watch the video, fill in
the survey and then send back their scores within 3 days. It is necessary we ask
people to do it in a certain time so they don't forget, and so we can begin looking
at results. From there we will add up all the scores from the different categories
of the survey and create a bar chart to display our results. We will then compare
the results we have discovered to the original experiment by Nisbett and Wilson
(1977).
We shall also ask the students whether they believe the way in which the
presentation was given affected their responses to the questions. This is being
done to test the awareness of students as to the Halo effect and their
subconscious judgement.

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Rationale
We have decided to use the same three categories as the original Halo Effect
experiment by Nisbett and Wilson in order to see if we get similar results to their
experiment: Being able to compare our results will allow us to make predictions
about the outcome of our research and subsequently guide us as to where we
might have made misjudgements.
Our selection of participants is random in order not to create bias (e.g. through
personality traits affecting judgement). The number of participants has been
selected based on what we realistically think we can manage given our time and
resource constraints.
The nature of the survey is to find out the extent to which the oratory
performance of the presenter effects the audience's reaction to his own personal
traits. It should therefore be noted that these traits are unrelated to the way in
which the presentation is given. We will use our results to explain whether
today's society is affected by this illusion which will allow us to draw up some
conclusions to how this relates to management today.

Logistics
For our experiment we will be collecting primary data; we have written a survey which
people will fill in, the survey has been specifically created for our project. The experiment is
using quantitative research as it is a close-ended survey. This means the students will not be
able to give detailed responses to the videos outside of the question specifications.
Expected Results
Based on past results and research, we expect our data to provide evidence of the existence of
the Halo Effect, i.e. our participants perception of the presenters traits will be affected by
the way in which he gives the presentation. We predict that on average, the scores given on
the 8 point scale will be higher for the video of the enthusiastic presentation than on the cold
and dull presentation video.
Limitations
As we only have a few weeks to carry out our experiment, our samples will be selected
from only the student segment of the population and our sample will be small. This is due to
limited time and a lack of connections within the city of Bristol. Our data collection will
therefore be limited. As a consequence, any anomalies may have large effects on our results.
The issue of sample size is highlighted by the fact that the collected data is in essence
qualitative; the way the students perceive the 8 point scale may vary wildly and so affect our
results which can only be rectified by having larger samples.

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In addition, we have a limited amount of resources, therefore we are unable to put on two
separate lectures as in the 1977 experiment; however we believe that a presenter describing a
painting will have just the same effect, and the viewers hopefully won't lose concentration in
a short video.
There is also another boundary in the design of our experiment: We are creating the video
interviews based on our own perception of what is deemed boring and unlikeable. Others
may perceive this differently and so when creating the video, we have no quantitative way of
judging how different (if at all) the videos are to each other and so whether this will have a
significant effect on our results. This could prove an inconsistency with the original
experiment.

Timetable of events

Task

Date of Completion By

PowerPoint proposing our research

project

26th February

Proposal Completion (2500 words)

6th March

Record two videos

12th March

Completed survey forms

12th March

Send out videos via email

20th March

Collect responses via email

24th March

Bar Chart

26th March

Compare data collection to original

experiment

27th March

First draft of research report

20th April

Complete research report

References:
ArtForgers.com. Halo Effect. [Online] Available from:

4th May

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http://www.artforgers.com/sw2.cfm?q=Halo_effect. [Assessed: 3rd March 2015]
Fleming, P and Spicer, A. The Academy of Management Annals, 2014 Vol. 8, No. 1,
237-298
Kotler (1980), Marketing Management ,(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall)
Marconi, J. (2001) Reputation Marketing. McGraw-Hill
MCKINSEY QUARTERLY. (2007) The halo effect, and other managerial delusions
Rosenzweig.P
Nisbett, R and Wilson T. (1977) The Halo Effect: Evidence for Unconscious
Alteration of Judgments. Journal of Feisonality and Social Psychology. [Online]
35(4). p.250-256. Available from:
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/92158/TheHaloEffect.pdf.
[Assessed: 3rd March 2015].
PsyBlog. (2007) The Halo Effect: When Your Own Mind is a Mystery. Available
from: www.spring.org.uk/2007/10/halo-effect-when-your-own-mind-is.php.
[Accessed: 2nd March 2015]

Thorndike, E. L. (1920). The Constant Error in Psychological Ratings. Journal of

Applied Psychology, 4, 25-29.