Halo effect

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The halo effect (sometimes called the halo error) is the proclivity for positive impressions of a person, company, country, brand, or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings.^[1][2] Halo effect is ”the name given to the phenomenon whereby evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality.”^[3] The halo effect is a cognitive bias which can prevent someone from forming an image of a person, a product or a brand based on the sum of all objective circumstances at hand.

The term was coined by Edward Thorndike. A simplified example of the halo effect is a person, after noticing that an individual in a photograph is attractive, well groomed, and properly attired, then assuming, using a mental heuristic, that the person in the photograph is a good person based upon the rules of their own social concept.^[4][5][6] This constant error in judgment is reflective of the individual's preferences, prejudices, ideology, aspirations, and social perception.^{[7][6][8][9][10]}