The Halo Effect—Evidence from Unconscious Alteration of Judgments
Nisbett, R.E., & DeCamp Wilson, T. (1977). “The Halo Effect—Evidence from Unconscious Alteration of Judgments”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 35(4), 250-256.
Arhe Vaninetti, Research Methods, PSY301, Pacific University, Oregon
April 10, 2023
In Nisbett & DeCamp Wilson’s (1977) article, they highlight the effects of individuals attributing appearance to overall character trait judgment, a phenomenon they described as the Halo Effect. In this study, college students were told to evaluate a video of an instructor for certain traits (namely his likability, attractiveness, mannerisms, and his accent), in either the warm condition (the professor was friendly and open) or the cold condition (the professor was factual and impersonal). The 118 subjects from the University of Michigan (62 male and 56 female) were placed into groups of 6 to 17, and were then asked to watch a video and rate the professor’s traits. All subjects were told that this was an evaluation of the consistency in ratings for the professor’s traits, which allowed for honest reviews from the students.
The students rated the professor on Likert scales, with some indicating agreement with a statement (i.e., “extremely appealing” to “extremely irritating”), and some indicating personal influence on rating (e.g., a student marking that physical appearance made them like him “much more” or “much less”). With this data, Nisbett & DeCamp Wilson (1977) established that the warm condition provided higher ratings of the professor, while the cold condition created lower ones. Also of note, the accent was rated as nearly equally irritating and appealing in the warm condition. Finally, when the audio from the video was removed for another study, it was found that the verbal cues were important enough to render that study’s findings null.
The subjects in this study were unaware of their ratings being influenced by the instructor’s traits, with a subject stating that she made an immediate judgment before the professor even began speaking. Other subjects stated that if they didn’t like him initially, then the cold condition only deepened the dislike.
Finally, in the discussion, the authors note that the altered judgment may require a lack of knowledge to do so. This proposes support for contemporary training on implicit bias for numerous characteristics in others, from attractiveness to race to physical ability.
One adjustment for this study that would deepen its meaning would be the inclusion of numerous professors with varying skin tones, conventional attractiveness (or lack thereof), and genders. Due to this study being released in 1977, the effects of patriarchal systems may have allowed a male in a position of power (a professor) to be rated differently than another person. If replicated today, the experimenters would need to control for numerous demographic traits.
Another interesting take on this study would be to track the effects of the professor’s age on the subjects ratings and attributions to character. With an aging population, the study of gerontology and its social ramifications would be relevant to societal understanding. Furthermore, with older adults being largely the population in political power in the United States, this would be valuable information to study the up-and-coming generation’s views of older individuals in positions of power. In this situation, the professor could easily be switched to an older politician of varying races and genders, and the subjects would ideally be traditional college aged students (i.e., 18 to 24 years old) who are either non-voters or active voters. With the voting groups, the exposure to older politicians would be easier to control for in the subjects. The subjects would be asked similar questions about attractiveness, mannerisms, likability, rhetoric, and agreeableness. The video’s script would be an agglomeration of recent speeches and apolitical talk with a neutral tone and warmth.
Overall, Nisbett & DeCamp Wilson (1977) added empirical evidence to the concept of the Halo Effect, strengthening psychological research and trustworthiness after an era of behaviorism.