The Halo Effect

The Halo Effect.Student’s name
University affiliation
Date:
Abstract
Physical appearance plays a vital role in various matters of life. It is observed directly in job markets where people are interviewed for relevant positions. It acts as an immediate determinant of internal competence where an individual can be judged from the outward appearance. The current study proposes that in a setting where actors ask the participants for charitable donations, the group with the actors that are dressed more presentable or professional will collect more money than the group of actors that are dressed unpresentable or unprofessionally. Two groups of individuals were selected, one representing the professionally dressed individuals and another representing the unprofessionally dressed individuals. The proposed hypothesis is then proved by subjecting the two groups of individuals into a class of students where they make their presentations for the audience to judge and contribute towards their charity organization
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Introduction:
Halo Effect is a cognitive bias by an individual towards certain entities. The entity could be a product, someone’s method of dressing, the way someone walks, talks and even the intellectual abilities of an individual. It has numerous effects on the daily activities. The halo effect works both in positive and negative directions, for instance, if an observer, likes the physical appearance of an individual, the impression is positive, however, if one dislike the physical impression of the other person then it would have a negative effect.

Halo is a term that has been used in analogy to the religious concept, a glowing circle which is seen floating just some metres above the saint’s heads in so many renaissance paintings. The heavenly light makes the saint’s face look bathed. By seeing that somebody is painted with a halo, one can determine whether one is a good or bad person.
Competency in workplace
In this age and era, several institutions, companies, non-governmental organizations and government institutions are downsizing and laying their employees off. The manner and nature of laying off the employees remain to be unanswered questions in the minds of several people. As expected, employees should be laid off based on their levels of competencies where more competent staff should be retained than the less competent ones. However, a certain trend has been observed that the people who remain employed are either friend with those in management or have the halo effect. As a result of this, employees have gone above and beyond their calls of duties in their jobs trying to stand out from the rest. They report to their places of work very early and leave at wee hours, they also take less time during their vacation periods. In addition, some are doing duties which are not even in their job descriptions (Bercheid & Walster, 1974).
The mushrooming specialization of psychology in places of work has devoted a great deal in areas of selecting employees, certain job applicants have gained favorable Advantage over other applicants based on the physical appearances. In a case where two educationally competent applicants are to be hired, the hiring personnel has been found to hire individuals who are much attractive to them as opposed to those who are not attractive. Likewise, other employees like employing individuals who possess certain external traits similar to them.
During performance appraisals, there has been observed biases created by Halo effect, several supervisors evaluate their employees based on traits such as their levels of enthusiasms. Those who are always enthusiastic are best suited to get the highest marks while those who by nature aren’t enthusiastic are the ones to get little marks. Halo effect results in keeping people who are not competent in their various jobs, upon retention of such people, they end up showing their true colors, and majority normally lack the necessary skills in their work and end up delivering mediocre results. They go back to their previous selves, they stop doing extra work, coming late and leaving early. Considering the current wave of the world where managements are laying off their employees, management should make informed decisions regarding the employees that they will retain in order to maintain competence in their respective companies. Keeping workers biased by the halo effect leads to a tremendous collapse of the entire entity.
The halo effect argues that the attractive individuals are more favorable than unattractive individuals in possession of certain favorable qualities in personality and future projection of a favorable life. The judgment of attractiveness has been observed across all the cultures, for instance, the beauty premium which is explained in Economics has been associated with favorable advantages in a labor market, and beautiful ladies are easily employed as opposed to their counterparts, the less beautiful. The halo effect has gone beyond in workplaces, some employees and employers have been found to trust attractive members that those who are not attractive. However the expectation in the provision of services is highly expected than those who are not attractive. It is an employment interview that one makes judgment rapidly from the findings based on physical appearance. Attractive complexities of the applicants are seen capable of producing beneficial results in a workplace, for example, high level of competence and cooperation. The bias effect is the same for both men and women in most setups. During an employment interview, attractiveness affects hire-ability in two ways, social utility, and social desirability. A socially desired person is a person who can be approached much easily. If an individual is employed and produces great rewards to the company, the person is said to be socially utilizable. Due to the widespread of halo effect in job employments, it surely plays a great role in job hiring (Bettencourt et al., 2001).
How outer appearance affect the perception of an individual
`Physical appearance also a big role in an interview, the employees expect to see a job applicant who is presentable, dressed in the appropriate clothing and a nice composure. Dressing should match the type of job that the applicant is applying for. Not only does clothing play an essential role during the process of selecting the best individuals to feel certain job positions, a similar to me effect also plays this fundamental role. In this case, the employers are looking for people whom they perceive to be similar to them in their physical appearances. The similar to me effect has been measured in terms of attitude, and personality. A similarity between the employer and the employee in work setting plays a great role in how the duo cope with one another. Much levels of similarity lead to confidence and a lot of trusts. Psychologically, people who present themselves in a good way for example, tend to be perceived as more intelligent , always popular and extensively successful in their lives that the people who present themselves in a bad way. A perception that someone is attractive is a perception that they are intelligent (Descrumaux et al., 2009).
In any interview, the expectation from the panel is normally to see an applicant with appropriate attire, different clothes have different meanings, and for example, if a person’s puts on a white coat, observers will tend to conclude that the person is intelligent. If someone puts on dark or black clothes, the first impression is that the person would be mourning something terrible like the death of a relative. Therefore it is always paramount to put on clothes that are presentable and specific for the occasion. Anyone going for an official duty should present himself or herself with clothes that will impress the individuals which he or she is going to. For instance, it is good to present oneself with suit anytime anyone is going for an office interview. Prior research has been done to determine the halo effect on various situations of life, however, the area as not been researched fully.
The current study
In the survey by use of a repetitive measures strategy, the present research pursues to
define if or not attraction induced by halo effect occur in charitable organizations, where the actors in more presentable and professional attire receive many donations from donors than those with unpresentable and unprofessional attire since the physical appearance of individuals are allied to the character traits .
Hypothesis
The hypothesis hypothesizes that in a setting where actors ask the participants for charitable donations, the group with the actors that are dressed more presentable or professional will collect more money than the group of actors that are dressed unpresentable or unprofessionally.
Method
Participants
The participants consisted of 100 students from both genders who were arbitrarily selected from age 18-25 in a college university from a several applicants who applied for participation. As a result of the type of the study, majority of partakers were whites (70%) and males (55%).
It was not a requirement for the partakers of the exercise to have a prior experience, a lack of practice should however not affect the outcome of the study because the donors show attractive biases towards well-dressed than those who are not well dressed.
The participants were divided equally (50/50). One group were given professional clothes and presentable materials while the other group was given unprofessional attire and donation collection materials. They all then met in the class hall to present for other students to donate.
Materials
One group of the actors were provided with casual clothes (T-shirts, jeans, rubber shoes, slippers which were of different colors, caps and shining chains). The second group of actors was provided with (Necktie, presentable shirts, suits and black shoes.) A clock was also put in front of the classroom for determination of the time used during the process.
Small posters were also prepared for the presentable group to aid making them more presentable in respect to their counterparts.
Procedure
All the participants were organized into two groups by random assortment method. While in the classroom, the two groups were placed in strategic locations where the presentation took place. Actors from individual groups received presentations from the group of actors who went on persuading the participants to donate to their charity.
The actors in the first group were provided with clothing that deemed casual, to every member among the fifty, twenty were given trousers, and the rest were given jeans. Different sweaters of different colors were also provided for them to cover their top body parts. They then presented in the classroom.
The second group was provided with professional clothing, suits, a pair of black shoes and ties. They then gave their presentation in the same location as did by their counterparts. At the end of the two presentations, participants were asked to donate to charity presented, the collections were then collected, and the totals were one and recorded.
References
Bercheid, E., & Walster, E. (1974). Physical attractiveness. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.),
Advances in experimental social psychology (157-215). New York: Cambridge
University Press.Bettencourt, Ann, Nancy Dorr, Kelly Charlton, and Deborah Hume. (2001). Status
Differences and in-group bias: A meta-analytic examination of the effects of status
Stability, status legitimacy, and group permeability. Psychological Bulletin, 127
Descrumaux, P., De Bosscher, S., & Léoni, V. (2009). Effects of facial attractiveness,
Gender, and competence of applicants on job recruitment. Swiss Journal of
Psychology, 68:1, 33-42.
Howard, J., & Ferris, G. (1996). The employment interview context: Social and
Situational influences on interviewer decisions. Journal of Applied Social
Psychology, 26, 112-136.