The halo effect: Evidence for unconscious alteration of judgments.
Abstract
Two different videotaped interviews were staged with the same individual-a college instructor who spoke English with a European accent.In one of the interviews the instructor was warm and friendly, in the other, cold and distant.The subjects who saw the warm instructor rated his appearance, mannerisms, and accent as appealing, whereas those who saw the cold instructor rated these attributes as irritating These results indicate that global evaluations of a person can induce altered evaluations of the person's attributes, even when there is sufficient information to allow for independent assessments of them.Furthermore, the subjects were unaware of this influence of global evaluations on ratings of attributes.In fact, the subjects who saw the cold instructor actually believed that the direction of influence was opposite to the true direction.They reported that their dislike of the instructor had no effect on their ratings of his attributes but that their dislike of his attributes had lowered their global evaluations of him.
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The patterns observed are consistent with findings on halo effects, in which an impression formed in one area influences overall evaluations.
“This is consistent with ndings on halo eects, in which an impression formed in one area inuences overall evaluations (Nisbett and Wilson, 1977;Klauer and Stern, 1992).”
From Do Investors Value Sustainability? A Natural Experiment Examining Ranking and Fund Flows (2019) · cites this paper as Nisbett and Wilson, 1977
Psychologists have documented numerous biases that distort human judgment in social and cognitive domains.
“Psychologists have documented numerous biases that distort human judgment, both within the social (Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) and cognitive domain (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).”
From Everyone I Don’t Like Is Biased: Affective Evaluations and the Bias Blind Spot (2026) · cites this paper as Nisbett & Wilson, 1977
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- Authors
- Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- ORCID
- Wilson, Timothy D.
- Venue
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Published
- 1977-04
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 250-256
- ISSN
- 0022-3514 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1315
- OpenAlex
- W2008037924
- Cited by
- 2,021
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 110 · 2025: 126 · 2024: 86 · 2023: 119 · 2022: 105 · 2021: 131 · 2020: 131 · 2019: 112 · 2018: 105 · 2017: 113 · 2016: 92 · 2015: 62 · 2014: 77 · 2013: 53 · 2012: 56
- FWCI
- 25.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Psychology of Social Influence
- Keywords
- halo effect, global assessment, impression formation, attribute ratings
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