Halo effect

The halo effect (sometimes called the halo error), a term coined by Edward Thorndike, is the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, country, brand, or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings of a person, company, country, brand, or product in another area. It is "the name given to the phenomenon whereby evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality;" in other words, it is a cognitive bias that can prevent people from forming an image based on the sum of all circumstances at hand. A simplified example of the halo effect could be when people, after noticing that an individual in a photograph is attractive, well groomed, and properly attired, then assumes, using a mental heuristic based on the rules of their own social concept, that the person in the photograph is a good person. This constant error in judgment is reflective of the evaluators' preferences, prejudices, ideology, aspirations, and social perception.