The halo effect (sometimes called the halo error), a term coined by Edward Thorndike, 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 of a person, company, country, brand, or product in another area. It is "the name given to the phenomenon whereby evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality;" in other words, it is a cognitive bias that can prevent people from forming an image based on the sum of all circumstances at hand. A simplified example of the halo effect could be when people, after noticing that an individual in a photograph is attractive, well groomed, and properly attired, then assumes, using a mental heuristic based on the rules of their own social concept, that the person in the photograph is a good person. This constant error in judgment is reflective of the evaluators' preferences, prejudices, ideology, aspirations, and social perception.
Context and applications
Psychology The term halo effect is used in psychology to describe a perception distortion that affects the way people interpret the information about others with whom they have formed a positive gestalt. For example, they find out that someone with whom they have formed a positive gestalt has cheated on his taxes; but because of the positive gestalt, they may dismiss the significance of this behavior or even think the person simply made a mistake. The halo effect refers to the tendency to evaluate an individual positively on many traits because of a shared belief. It is a type of immediate judgment discrepancy, or cognitive bias, in which a person making an initial assessment of another person, place, or thing will assume ambiguous information based on concrete information. The halo effect is an evaluation by an individual and can affect the perception of a decision, action, idea, business, person, group, entity, or other whenever concrete data is generalized or influences ambiguous information. The halo effect can also be explained as the behavior (usually unconscious) of using evaluations based on unrelated criteria to make judgments about something or someone. The halo effect is sometimes used to refer specifically to when this behavior has a positive correlation, such as viewing someone who is attractive as likely to be successful and popular. When this judgment has a negative connotation, however, such as when someone unattractive is more readily blamed for a crime than someone attractive, it is sometimes referred to as the horn effect.
Marketing The term halo effect is used in marketing to explain consumer bias toward certain products because of favorable experience with other products made by the same company. It is used in the part of brand marketing called "line extensions." One common halo effect is when the perceived positive features of a particular item extend to a broader brand. A notable example is the manner in which the popularity of Apple's iPod generated enthusiasm for the corporation's other products. Advertising often makes use of television shows, movies and those who star in them, to promote products via the halo effect. In the automotive industry, exotic, limited-production luxury models or low-volume sports cars made by a manufacturer's racing, motorsports, or in-house modification teams, are sometimes referred to as "halo cars" for the effect they are intended to produce on selling other vehicles within the make. To contrast this with the automotive terminology "flagship model" (see flagship car). In the wine industry, certain wine features create a halo effect that can influence the customer's opinion of a given wine. The inclusion of the category "organic" on the label of a wine can increase the consumer's positive valuation of the wine. Organic wines are conceived of as being healthy, having a better taste, scent, and color, and resulting in a higher degree of overall satisfaction. Another example of the halo effect in the wine industry is the association of traditional corks with wine quality: corked bottles are systematically rated as of higher quality than bottles that use screw caps and plastic caps since the latter are viewed as signifiers of low-quality wines. Advertising in one channel has been shown to have a halo effect on advertising in another channel. A halo effect with regard to health, dubbed a "health halo," is used in food marketing to increase sales of a product; it can result in increased consumption of the product in the halo, which may be unhealthy. The term "halo effect" has also been applied to human rights organizations that have used their status to move away from their stated goals. Political scientist Gerald Steinberg has claimed that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) take advantage of the halo effect and are "given the status of impartial moral watchdogs" by governments and the news media. The Ronald McDonald House, a widely known NGO, openly celebrates the positive outcomes it receives from the halo effect. The web page for the Ronald McDonald House in Durham, North Carolina, states that 95% of survey participants were aware of Ronald McDonald House Charities. This awareness is attributed to the halo effect, as employees, customers, and stakeholders are more likely to be involved in a charity that they recognize and trust, with a name and logo that are familiar. A brand's halo effect can protect its reputation in the event of a crisis. An event that is detrimental to a brand that is viewed favorably would not be as threatening or damaging to a brand that consumers view unfavorably.
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