Halo effect

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 influence one's opinion or feelings. 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 prevent someone from accepting a person, a product or a brand based on the sum of all objective circumstances at hand.

This article is about the cognitive bias. For other uses, see The Halo Effect.

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.

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