Research critique
Halo-effect is frequently referred to as cognitive bias. This cognitive bias acts during generation of impression towards a person’s attitude and personality based on his or her looks or the physical appearance. For example, the majority of the people consider that celebrities are intellectual, kind hearted and funny. The formation this kind of positive mindset about the celebrities is mainly due to their apparent attractive looks in their public gatherings and virtual media (Cherry, 2016). According to Lewis-Beck, Bryman and Liao (2003), the main definition of Halo-Effect is: what looks beautiful is assumed to be good. It is regarded as a habitual tendency of people in order to rate the attractiveness of an individual more favorably for their traits in personality in comparison to those individuals who are assumed to be visually unattractive. Halo effect thus gives rise to biased judgments where feelings overcome the cognitions while appraising others.
The following paper aims conduct a critical review of a scientific paper based on Halo-Effect. The review will contain a concise summary and evaluation of the research followed by detailed descriptions of the theoretical conflicts and controversies related to the topic. At the end, the assignment will highlight the future prospects of the research as revealed from the research gap of the study conducted by the paper that will be critiqued in the following pages.
The paper selected for the critical analysis is the study conducted by Zebrowitz and Franklin (2014) in order to document the influence of halo-effect stereotyping an individual’s personality. According to Zebrowitz and Franklin (2014), two well-documented phenomena an individual’s perceptions are attractiveness halo effect (nurturing positive impressions towards the attractive person) and baby-face stereotype (nurturing childlike impressions towards baby-faced persons) as shown by the children, young adults and people who are from diverse cultural background. The aim of the study was to compare and contrast effects for the younger adults (YA) and the older adults (OA) on personality stereotyping in the domain of halo effect. This can be considered as a strength of the study as the aims and the objectives of the study along with the projected population has been clearly described. Under the methods section, the author used judging capacity of YA and OA against competence, health, untrustworthiness, hostility, attractiveness, and baby-faceness of younger and older neutral expression faces. The Zebrowitz and Franklin (2014) used multi-level modeling assessed effects for the rater age and face age on appearance stereotypes. According to Heck and Thomas (2015) multilevel modeling is helping in analyzing the outcome of the psychological studies in an unbiased manner. The results highlighted that like YA, OA also showed both the attractiveness halo effect along with babyface stereotype. However, it was highlighted the OA have weaker effects of attractiveness over the impressions of the untrustworthiness. Moreover, only OA associated with the higher level of competence. The study also revealed own-age accentuation in relation to OA and YA. OA and YA displayed stronger face stereotypes for the features of the face, which are closer to their own age bracket. The difference in the respective strength of the stereotypes showed OA positivity effect over influencing positive facial qualities on impressions or comparative less influence over the negative ones. The authors finally concluded that OA personal age-biases which was previously shown in age, emotion, identity recognition and OA positively effects which was previously found to lay in attention, social judgments and memory also influence the differences in the strength and the content of the appearance stereotypes (Zebrowitz & Franklin, 2014). In details, it can be stated that the OA are just as vulnerable towards the face stereotype like that of YA. The OA showed an attractiveness halo-effect. The effect was executed while judging people that are more attractive. Attractive people are assumed to be more competent and healthy persons and less hostile and untrustworthy and it is consistent with the mindset of the YA. On contrary, OA showed weaker halo effect in comparison to YA for the impressions of health and competence of the younger faces while they have stronger effect for impressions of the health for the OA. The halo effect is also modulated by the cultural and age-wise preference. Thus, people place more values on the health of the similar peers and thereby explaining the halo-effect on age specific and culturally specific manner. However, in the domain of intelligence and trustworthiness a inversely proportional halo-effect relationship exists between the perception of the OA. However, in case of YA the people who are found to be more attractive and successful in achieving trust thus showing a directly proportional relationship.
Social Theory Evolving Halo-Effect
The study conducted by Zebrowitz and Franklin (2014) however, has numerous limitations. One of the limitations of the study is its small sample size. Zebrowitz and Franklin (2014) screened 48 YA participants of which 23 were men and the average age group was 18 to 22. 48 participants were also selected from the OA of which 24 are men and the average age group is 65 to 85 years. According to Marshall et al. (2013), poor sample size hamper the generalization of the data. However, both the selected group of participants in the study was provided equal treatments. The only difference is, OA were screened with the help of Mini-Mental Health State Examination. None of the YAs were screened with this mental health state examination tool and thus might give rise to the generation of biased results. The images of the pictures, which were used as the critique, are of 69 YA between the age group of 25 to 39 years and 68 OA between the age group of the 60 and 74 years. It should be noted that Ya faces which are used to the scrutiny have higher age brackets in comparison to the respondents of the research of YA group. This difference in the age group is used in order to nullify the predicted own-age accentuation effect of “own-age verses other-age”. This can be highlighted as the strength of the study.
In relations to the theories and the controversies related to halo-effect, Talamas, Mavor and Perrett (2016) stated that despite the old age saying do not judge a book by its cover, the facial cues are frequently used in order to guide the first impressions. As per the literature, facial cues guides towards assessing the level of health and intelligence. However, the majority of the roles are overshadowed by “attractiveness halo” where the desirable attributes are ascribed preferentially towards the attractive people. The influence of the attractive halo-effect over the perceptions of the overall academic performance under the classroom settings revealed that it has potential influence over the performance of the students. In relation to this theory, Talamas, Mavor and Perrett (2016) conducted a research in order to study the limiting effects of the attractiveness halo in the perceptions of the overall academic performance university students (n= 100). The findings suggested that there is a misleading effect of the attractiveness on the level of accuracy of the first impressions of competence and this might have potential consequences in several areas like education and hiring. There it can be said that social theory of halo-effect is guided by the concept that the persons who have good looking or an attractive face develops a perceptions upon the opposite persons that he or she is quite intelligent. The same have been highlighted in the study conducted by Zebrowitz and Franklin (2014). Malkinson et al. (2013) stated that the facial attractiveness might be associated with the level of actual intelligence. However, it is based on various other potential paths. These paths are mainly guided by the biological factors like the good genes, environmental factors like the impact of nutrition, influence of intelligence on the concept of grooming and in taking the healthcare decisions and self-fulfilling prophecy under which the individuals who looks visually appealing are expected to be smarter. They are also provided with greater opportunities in order to achieve higher positions in life. Thus, the social structure of the society mainly guides or assists the people who are visually appealing. The relationship between the facial attractiveness and intelligence is mainly guided by the bad gene hypothesis where attractiveness is used as a cue to intelligence. However, the study conducted by Mitchem et al. (2015) stated that the facial attractiveness has no direct relation with the concept of intelligence. Mitchem et al. (2015) proved their hypothesis by conducting their study over the genetically informative sample.
The future research approach of the research that has evolved from the study of Zebrowitz and Franklin (2014) that has been critiqued in this paper is to examine mechanisms underlying the own-age accentuation along with the OA effects of positivity over the face stereotypes. One possible mechanism can be variation in the attention. The research conducted by Isaacowitz et al. (2008) based on eye tracking highlighted that OA showed higher level of attention towards more positively attractive faces and comparatively less attention towards the negatively valence faces. It can also be said that people showed greater level of attention towards the similar-age faces. Other associated process is variations in the differentiations. It is the degree to, which an individual perceive the level of variation among the faces. An individual’s ratings over the different traits or the quality appearance can highlight higher level of differentiation of own-age faces and thus OA might show higher differentiation towards the positively valenced faces and comparatively less level of differentiation towards the negatively valenced faces. In the future study, this can be analyzed with the help of an index, which was developed by Linville, Salovey and Fischer (1986). It would be applied in order to investigate the level to which an individual perceive the variations in other-race in comparison to the own-race faces.
The halo-effect has significant application over the hiring process. Yates, Hooley and Bagri (2017) stated that the companies, which places a premium over the hiring attractive people have their average revenues higher in-comparison to the other similar organizations which ho dot higher attractive employees. Yates, Hooley and Bagri (2017) are of the opinion that the public rewards business, which are guided by beautiful faces. This leads to hiring of the non-deserving candidates only on the basis of the looks and creating a sense of frustrations in the mind of the most promising and potential job seeker. Beautiful women have it better and at times get away with things, which the ordinary people cannot. Due to their good looks, they have an inherent capacity in influencing the mind and the thought process of the people and thereby helping to get their work done in ease and that too providing minimal effort. All these can be explained under the banner of the halo-effect. The concept of beauty or good looks holds prominent significance across both the gender. The good-looking individuals can fetch more smile, more admirers and better treatment. However, these special treatments, which are exclusively reserved for the good-looking persons at times hampers the balance in the society. The good-looking people who are boastful for their looks, set up for them powerful expectations. They start expecting others to fawn and then expect things to be smoothly handed over to their silver plate. This over-confidence at times generates a sense of depression when they come across their success. Moreover, the individuals who are fawned for their beauty and love to take advantages, have fewer amounts of friends and at times suffer from loneliness (Mears, 2014).
Conclusion
Thus from the above discussion it can be concluded that halo-effect in social psychology holds prominent significance. Under the influence of the halo-effect, people tend to nurture a positive thought for n individual who is blessed with good looks, in spite of indulging into an active conversation with that individuals. These positive thoughts are mainly concentrated in the domain of intelligence, kindness and success in life. However, this theory is socially bias. The theory of halo-effect might create increase in the level of dis-satisfaction among the truly deserving candidates at the time of job-interview who only is rejected because of not having good looks in comparison to others. Future research will aim to highlight the underlying psychological basis of the halo-effect. This should be done in separate studies. One study with investigate the halo-effect from the perspective of OA and another study will reveal the perspective of the YA.
References
Cherry, K. (2016). What is the Halo effect. Psychology. Retrieved from: https://www.dcookacademic.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/what_is_the_halo_effect.pdf
Fung, H. H., Isaacowitz, D. M., Lu, A. Y., Wadlinger, H. A., Goren, D., & Wilson, H. R. (2008). Age-related positivity enhancement is not universal: Older Chinese look away from positive stimuli. Psychology and Aging, 23(2), 440.
Heck, R. H., & Thomas, S. L. (2015). An introduction to multilevel modeling techniques: MLM and SEM approaches using Mplus. Routledge.
Lewis-Beck, M., Bryman, A. E., & Liao, T. F. (2003). The Sage encyclopedia of social science research methods. Sage Publications.
Linville, P. W., Salovey, P., & Fischer, G. W. (1986). Stereotyping and perceived distributions of social characteristics: An application to ingroup-outgroup perception. In Portions of this chapter are based on a paper presented at the Conference on Social Cognition, Nags Head, North Carolina, May 1983.. Academic Press.
Malkinson, S., Waldrop, T. C., Gunsolley, J. C., Lanning, S. K., & Sabatini, R. (2013). The effect of esthetic crown lengthening on perceptions of a patient’s attractiveness, friendliness, trustworthiness, intelligence, and self?confidence. Journal of periodontology, 84(8), 1126-1133.
Marshall, B., Cardon, P., Poddar, A., & Fontenot, R. (2013). Does sample size matter in qualitative research?: A review of qualitative interviews in IS research. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 54(1), 11-22.
Mears, A. (2014). Aesthetic labor for the sociologies of work, gender, and beauty. Sociology Compass, 8(12), 1330-1343.
Mitchem, D. G., Zietsch, B. P., Wright, M. J., Martin, N. G., Hewitt, J. K., & Keller, M. C. (2015). No relationship between intelligence and facial attractiveness in a large, genetically informative sample. Evolution and Human Behavior, 36(3), 240-247.
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.
Yates, J., Hooley, T., & Bagri, K. K. (2017). Good looks and good practice: the attitudes of career practitioners to attractiveness and appearance. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 45(5), 547-561.
Zebrowitz, L. A., & Franklin Jr, R. G. (2014). The attractiveness halo effect and the babyface stereotype in older and younger adults: similarities, own-age accentuation, and older adult positivity effects. Experimental aging research, 40(3), 375-393.
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