Example of Halo Effect
- A company's CEO is attractive and charismatic, leading analysts to rate the company's stock as a better investment and its products as higher quality, even without examining the fundamentals.
Positive impression of the leader created a halo that extended to judgments about the company. - A professor who is organized and clear in lectures is assumed by students to also be a careful grader and approachable during office hours, without evidence for either.
Positive attributes in one area created expectations of positive attributes in unrelated areas.
Note
This is a common biasFirst named by Edward Thorndike in 1920. The opposite effect—where negative impressions lead to negative judgments across domains—is sometimes called the "Horn Effect."
