The Halo Effect

I recently came across the phrase "the halo effect" and did not know what it meant. So, I googled it and found this wiki page - Halo Effect which was quite informative.

The theory really struck me as so very true and I had never thought about it before. This happens in our everyday life, don't you think? Perception of one trait influenced by perception of other trait i.e the normal human tendency to make specific inferences on the basis of a general impression about something/somebody. Attractive people are often judged as having a more desirable personality and more skills than someone of average appearance. Thus, we see that celebrities are used to endorse products that they have no actual expertise in evaluating, and with which they may not even have any prior affiliation - Harold Kelley. When I come to think of it, YES, I have seen this happen and in fact I have also done this subconciously when I meet someone.

Why do we do this?
May be because some of the questions like how good/lovable is the person?, is he/she helpful? etc are not tangible or concrete. We cannot associate a number with such things.

On further research, I came across a group performance experiment done by Prof. Barry Staw (UC Berkeley) . The experiment showed that members attribute one set of characteristics to groups they believe are high performers, and a very different characteristics to groups they believe are low performers. When told their group had performed well, members described it as having been more cohesive, with better communication, and more open to change. When the same group was told that it had performed poorly, they remembered the opposite. In fact, their performance was just about the same but the only difference was what the professor told them.

This is true even in the business world. when a company is doing well with high sales, profits and stock price, analysts describe the company as having a smart strategy, the CEO as a visionary, the employees as motivated. However, when the sales are low and the stock prices fall, they quickly conclude that the company's strategy went wrong. In fact, nothing much has changed!!!!!!!!!!! Our perceptions of them are based on other things that are concrete and un-ambiguous, like their financial performance. We cannot measure how smart the company strategy is or how visionary their CEO is or how motivated their employees are.

Now I understand why my professor asks for "hard numbers" when I give my opinion in class discussions to support my point of view.

Please share if you have some similar experiences or any examples you have come across.