User:Isaacmoore311/sandbox

The halo effect is a type of immediate judgement discrepancy, or cognitive bias, where a person making an initial assessment of another person, place, or thing will assume ambiguous information based upon concrete information. A simplified example of the halo effect is when an individual noticing that the person in the photograph is attractive, well groomed, and properly attired, assumes, using a mental heuristic, that the person in the photograph is a good person based upon the rules of that individual’s social concept. This constant error in judgment is reflective of the individual’s preferences, prejudices, ideology, aspirations, and social perception. 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.

A study by demonstrated the halo effect on judgments of intelligence and competence on academic tasks. Sixty male undergraduate students rated the quality of essays which included both well and poorly written samples. One third were presented with a photo of an attractive female as author, another third with that of an unattractive female as author, and the last third were shown neither. In average most of the Participants gave significantly better writing evaluations for the more attractive author. On a scale of 1 to 9, the well-written essay by the attractive author received an average of 6.7 while the unattractive author received a 5.9 (with a 6.6 as a control). The gap was larger on the poor essay: the attractive author received an average of 5.2, the control a 4.7, and the unattractive a 2.7, suggesting readers are generally more willing to give physically attractive people the benefit of the doubt when performance is below standard than others.

Research conducted by Moore, Filippou, & Perrett (2011), sought residual cues to intelligence in female and male faces while attempting to control for the attractiveness halo effect. Over 300 photographs of Caucasian British college students were rated for perceived intelligence. The photographs that were scored lowest in low perceived intelligence were used to create a low-intelligence composite face and those photographs that were scored highest for high perceived intelligence were used to create high-intelligence composite face. Both female and male, of high- and low- perceived intelligence were created resulting in four groups of composite faces. Participants for the study were recruited online; 164 female and 92 male heterosexual residents of the UK rated each of the composite faces for intelligence and attractiveness. Of the female composites, attractiveness seemed to be controlled as both the high- and low- perceived intelligence groups were rated as equally attractive. However, of the male face composites, the high-perceived intelligence group was rated as significantly more attractive than the low-perceived intelligence group, suggesting that either the authors could not adequately control for the attractiveness halo effect for the male composite photographs or that intelligence is an integral factor of attractiveness in high intelligent male faces. The second part of the study found that the composites in the high-perceived intelligence group were rated highest in the factors of friendly and funny as markers of intelligence in both the female and male group. While intelligence does not seem to be a factor that contributes to attractiveness in women, with regards to men, attractive faces are perceived to be more intelligent, friendly, and funny by women and men.

A study by yielded much of the same results as are seen in other studies focusing on the halo effect—attractive individuals were rated more highly in qualities such as creativity, intelligence, and sensitivity than unattractive individuals. However, in addition to these results Kaplan found that some women were influenced by the halo effect on attractiveness only when presented with members of the opposite sex. When presented with an attractive member of the same sex, the effect was attenuated for some women. continue this line of research, going on to demonstrate that jealousy of an attractive individual has slight effect in evaluation of that person. Their work shows this to be more prevalent among females than males, with some females being less influenced by the halo effect. Later research by Moore, Filippou, & Perrett (2011) was able to control for attractiveness in composite photographs of females who were perceived to be of high or low intelligence, while showing that the attractiveness halo effect was seen in high intelligent male composite faces by heterosexual residents of the UK. Either the halo effect is negated by feelings of jealousy in women or the halo effect is lessened when women are looking at same sex individuals or the attractiveness halo effect can be controlled for in women it appears that there is a difference in affect produced by the attractiveness halo effect at least between binary genders.