and his accent. They
were also asked how
much they thought they
liked the teacher on an
8 point scale. As a final
part of the study some
of the students were
told that the researcher was interested to
know if how much they
thought they would like
the professor had any
bearing on their ratings
of him, whilst others
were asked the opposite
- how much the characteristics they just rated
influenced their liking of
the teacher. Amazingly,
the students had no
idea why they gave
the responses they did.
They could not draw a
link between their liking of the teacher and
the ratings of the characteristics. This clearly
shows that the students
were totally unaware of
the halo effect in action.
In fact, they were convinced that their rat-
ings had absolutely no
bearing at all on if they
thought they would like
the professor or not.
Without realising it, we
make inferences and
judgements, all the
time thinking they are
our own and not influenced by anything else.
Attractiveness commonly produces the
halo effect. How each
of us views attractiveness in a person differs
drastically, but it is likely that if we find someone physically attractive
we will also see them
as having other good
qualities such as intelligence and a good sense
of humour. Numerous
studies have shown
how the production of
a halo effect is tied
into our attraction to a
person - it is very rare
that if we find a person
27
attractive we also think
they are mean or uncaring. An experiment that
demonstrates the halo
effect well was carried
out by Dion & Berscheid
in 1972. They wanted
to investigate the relationship between the
halo effect and attraction. Sixty participants
were given three photos to look at, one of
an attractive individual, one of an average