Don’t judge a book by its cover… Everyone has heard this phrase at least once in their life, yet, many people do not live by this “rule”. In fact, attractive people are often considered “good” while unattractive people are considered “bad”. Just look at any teenage movie ever…the attractive people are popular and admired, while other less attractive ones are perceived as losers. But it’s not just movies and fiction, this happens in real life too! Society refers to this phenomenon as “pretty privilege”, and scholars call it the attractiveness Halo Effect. It affects your everyday life and you might not even notice... So, what exactly is the attractiveness halo effect? Why is it so prevalent? And what areas of life does it affect and how? Let’s find out!

This article will cover:

·       What is the attractiveness halo effect?

·       What are the consequences of the halo effect?

·       How to reduce the halo effect?

What is the Attractiveness Halo Effect?

The Halo Effect is a type of cognitive bias in impression formation, and it is defined as a tendency to allow one known characteristic of a person to affect our judgement of their unrelated qualities [13]. Thus, in terms of the attractiveness halo effect (also referred to as attractiveness stereotype) this means that if a person is physically attractive, one tends to assume that they also possess socially desirable character qualities, such as high intelligence, competence, trustworthiness or sociability [3, 13]. This also extends to mental and physical health; attractive people tend to be considered more mentally stable and physically healthy. Moreover, the opposite also appears to occur, meaning that physically unattractive people are thought to possess more negative qualities [13]. This is sometimes referred to as the horn or devil effect [7, 14].

Why does it occur?

Researcher Solomon Asch further investigated this phenomenon and concluded that one’s judgements of other people are largely influenced by first impressions [2]. This is linked to the so-called “primacy effect” which means that the first information that we receive is the most important when forming an opinion [11] and indeed, physical appearance is usually the first thing we notice and evaluate when meeting someone. Then, if we consider the person to be attractive, we might be more likely to assume that they are also a good person with positive qualities and vice versa.

Additionally, researchers also suggest that the Halo Effect is a result of a failure in our analytic thinking [18]. While intuitive thinking is the default automatic process, analytic thinking is effortful and controlled. But when it comes to the halo effect, it is possible that we generate an impression intuitively based on a person's physical appearance and our analytic system fails to interfere and correct the often inaccurate assumptions!

What are the consequences of the halo effect?

The Halo effect is a prevalent bias that you can encounter on an everyday basis, without even realising it. Below are some of the examples on how perceived beauty might lead to biased judgements of someone’s personality, ability or behaviour.

Workplace

One of the settings where you can encounter this attractiveness effect is the workplace, both in terms of performance ratings and income. One study found that, on average, physically attractive waiters earn (in tips) approximately $1261 more than unattractive waiters per year [12]. Also, attractiveness has a larger importance for female customers and a larger influence on female servers’ earnings. Moreover, Judge and colleagues [9] also found that physical attractiveness can directly and indirectly affect a person's financial well-being and overall income throughout life.

Education

You might also encounter the halo effect in academic settings. For example, in an older study, researchers found that teachers assumed that the more attractive students had higher IQ and expected them to obtain more education in the future, compared to less attractively perceived students [4]. A recent striking finding reported that more attractive students earned significantly lower grades in online classes with their camera off (i.e., when teachers could not see them) than they did in traditional classes; this suggests a possible high attractiveness bias [8]. Lastly researcher Talamas and colleagues [17] investigated the relationship between perceived attractiveness and judgements of academic performance. They found that faces that were rated as more attractive were also rated as being more intelligent and having better academic performance! Following their experiment, researchers Malouf and colleagues [10] proposed that, to prevent this bias in educational contexts, teachers should not be aware of whose paper they are grading so that their perception of the student’s attractiveness does not affect their grade. In some schools or universities, students submit their papers anonymously to avoid this very bias, among others; this method should be endorsed a lot more.

Relationships

Love at first sight is the perfect example of the Halo Effect. Nowadays, more and more people turn to online dating, which provides a perfect opportunity for the attractiveness bias to kick in, as the first stimuli we have access to is a photo, and consequently how attractive we think others are. In a fake online dating scenario, researcher Bak [1] found that attractive people were considered to have more positive traits, less negative traits, and that the evaluators were more willing to get to know the person. Interestingly, this effect was only observed in male evaluators. Similarly, another study found that people who were rated as more attractive based on their online dating profile were also rated as more intelligent, secure and emotionally stable [15].

Law enforcement

Lastly, the Halo effect can sometimes, but not always, be observed among jurors or police officers. There is significant evidence showing that the mock jury was less certain of a defendant's guilt when they were attractive and they recommended more lenient punishment than for the less attractive defendant [5]. Additionally, researcher Sigall and colleagues [16] found that more lenient treatment of attractive offenders might only occur when the crime is not directly related to the offender's attractiveness. Moreover, in a sample of real offenders, more attractive ones were less likely to be sentenced to prison, unless they had a prior record of criminal activities [6]. Attractiveness was not related to the sentence severity for offenders who committed more serious crimes.

How can we reduce the attractiveness halo effect?

The first step is acknowledging that the Halo effect exists, and that you might be influenced by it whenever you meet someone. Then, it is up to you to make sure that you do not let it influence your judgement! As mentioned previously, the Halo effect is related to two types of thinking: analytical and intuitive. A stronger analytical thinking may indeed reduce the halo effect by balancing out the biases guided by intuitive thinking. There are studies showing that, when people are primed to use analytical thinking, they are less biased when evaluating attributes of a teacher. Therefore, thinking more carefully before judging a book by it’s cover may lead to more accurate perceptions about people’s real personality, attributes, abilities and health.

Extra resources:

1.     TedTalk – Blinded by beauty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay9cf8X9N4Q&t=18s

2. YouTube video – The halo effect and how it affects your everyday life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t607NQO-0qQ

References

1. Bak, P. (2010). Sex differences in the attractiveness halo effect in the online dating environment. Journal of Business and Media Psychology, 1(1), 1-7.

2.     Cherney, K. (April 2019). What is the halo effect? Retrieved May 29, 2021 from https://www.healthline.com/health/halo-effect

3.     Cherry, K. (July 2020). Why the halo effect influences how we perceive others. Retrieved on May 29, 2021 from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-halo-effect-2795906

4.     Clifford, M. M., & Walster, E. (1973). The effect of physical attractiveness on teacher expectations. Sociology of education, 248-258. doi:10.2307/2112099

5.     Efran, M. G. (1974). The effect of physical appearance on the judgment of guilt, interpersonal attraction, and severity of recommended punishment in a simulated jury task. Journal of Research in Personality, 8(1), 45-54. https://doi.org/10.1016/0092-6566(74)90044-0

6.     Fraga, A. P. (2015). Pretty probationers: The relationship between physical attractiveness and sentencing outcomes (Doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University).

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1428519530

7.     Gibson, J. L., & Gore, J. S. (2015). You’re OK until you misbehave: How norm violations magnify the attractiveness devil effect. Gender Issues, 32(4), 266-278. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-015-9142-5

8.     Hernández-Julián, R., & Peters, C. (2017). Student appearance and academic performance. Journal of Human Capital, 11(2), 247-262. doi:10.1086/691698

9.     Judge, T. A., Hurst, C., & Simon, L. S. (2009). Does it pay to be smart, attractive, or confident (or all three)? Relationships among general mental ability, physical attractiveness, core self-evaluations, and income. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(3), 742.

10.  Malouff, J. M., Stein, S. J., Bothma, L. N., Coulter, K., & Emmerton, A. J. (2014). Preventing halo bias in grading the work of university students. Cogent Psychology, 1(1), 988937. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2014.988937

11.  Neugaard, B. (August 2016). Halo effect. Retrieved on May 29, 2021 from https://www.britannica.com/science/halo-effect

12.  Parrett, M. (2015). Beauty and the feast: Examining the effect of beauty on earnings using restaurant tipping data. Journal of Economic Psychology, 49, 34-46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2015.04.002

13.  Pohl, R. F. (Ed.). (2016). Cognitive illusions: Intriguing phenomena in judgement, thinking and memory. Psychology Press.

14.  Prera, A (2021, March 22). Why the halo effect affects how we perceive others. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/halo-effect.html

15.  Ramaker, A. A. (2020). The impact of the halo effect in online dating (Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Stout). http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/81376

16.  Sigall, H. & Ostrove, N. (1975). Beautiful but dangerous. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31(3), 410–414.

17.  Talamas, S. N., Mavor, K. I., & Perrett, D. I. (2016). Blinded by beauty: Attractiveness bias and accurate perceptions of academic performance. PloS one, 11(2), e0148284. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0148284

18.  Wen, W., Li, J., Georgiou, G. K., Huang, C., & Wang, L. (2020). Reducing the Halo Effect by Stimulating Analytic Thinking. Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000418