whole office! It is not necessary that
the one characteristic they evaluate and generalise from be a mistaken view - someone can be very
intelligent and rightly appraised as
being so, but if they generalise this
intelligence into meaning they are
an all round good employee this is
not necessarily true. How can the
halo effect be avoided? By making informed decisions and looking
at staff as a whole and not basing
evaluations on individual characteristics. This may well be easier said
than done, as Nisbett and Wilson
previously showed, people are very
unwilling to accept that their views
have been influenced by anything
other than their own judgement.
characteristic, such as dedication
to the job, the halo effect comes
in to play. If an employee turns
up ten minutes early every morning then he or she would surely be
assumed to be highly dedicated to
the company. However, if they turn
up early because their train arrives
at a certain time and and not out
of a desire to get cracking on a
Monday morning, then the supervisor has been conned into giving a
high score for nothing. Especially if
that employee did virtually nothing
all day when the supervisor cannot
see them. If the supervisor draws
a general impression based on
one characteristic then this person
might well keep their job - even if
they are the least productive in the
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