Horn effect

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The horn effect, closely related to the halo effect, is a form of cognitive bias that causes one's perception of another to be unduly influenced by a single negative trait. [1] [2] [3] An example of the horn effect may be that an observer is more likely to assume a physically unattractive person is morally inferior to an attractive person, despite the lack of relationship between morality and physical appearance. [4] [5]

Contents

Etymology

The term is derived from the word "horn" and refers to the devil's horns. This is in contrast to the word halo and the halo effect, based on the concept of a saint's halo. [6]

In a 1920 study published by Thorndike [7] that focused on the halo effect, it was noted that "ratings were apparently affected by a marked tendency to think of the person in general as rather good or rather interior [ sic ] [lower-alpha 1] and to color the judgments of the qualities by this general feeling". [lower-alpha 2]

Alternate terminology

It is sometimes called the horns effect, [2] reverse-halo effect, or devil effect. [8]

Bias in action

The horn effect occurs when "individuals believe that negative traits are connected to each other." [3] It is a phenomenon in which an observer's judgment of a person is adversely affected by the presence of (for the observer) an unfavorable aspect of this person.

See also

Explanatory notes

  1. "inferior"
  2. Although not popularizing the actual term Horn effect.

Related Research Articles

Bias is a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, or a belief. In science and engineering, a bias is a systematic error. Statistical bias results from an unfair sampling of a population, or from an estimation process that does not give accurate results on average.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Thorndike</span> American psychologist (1874–1949)

Edward Lee Thorndike was an American psychologist who spent nearly his entire career at Teachers College, Columbia University. His work on comparative psychology and the learning process led to the theory of connectionism and helped lay the scientific foundation for educational psychology. He also worked on solving industrial problems, such as employee exams and testing.

In social psychology, fundamental attribution error, also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect, is a cognitive attribution bias where observers underemphasize situational and environmental factors for the behavior of an actor while overemphasizing dispositional or personality factors. In other words, observers tend to overattribute the behaviors of others to their personality and underattribute them to the situation or context. Although personality traits and predispositions are considered to be observable facts in psychology, the fundamental attribution error is an error because it misinterprets their effects.

Trait ascription bias is the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable in their personal traits across different situations. More specifically, it is a tendency to describe one's own behaviour in terms of situational factors while preferring to describe another's behaviour by ascribing fixed dispositions to their personality. This may occur because peoples' own internal states are more readily observable and available to them than those of others.

The halo effect is the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, country, brand, or product in one area to positively or negatively influence one's opinion or feelings. Halo effect is "the name given to the phenomenon whereby evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality." The halo effect is a cognitive bias which can possibly prevent someone from accepting a person, a product or a brand based on the idea of an unfounded belief on what is good or bad.

The physical attractiveness stereotype is the tendency to assume that people who are physically attractive, based on social beauty standards, also possess other desirable personality traits. Research has shown that those who are physically attractive are viewed as more intelligent, competent, and socially desirable. The target benefits from what has been coined as “pretty privilege”, namely social, economic, and political advantages or benefits. Physical attractiveness can have a significant effect on how people are judged in terms of employment or social opportunities, friendship, sexual behavior, and marriage.

Interpersonal attraction, as a part of social psychology, is the study of the attraction between people which leads to the development of platonic or romantic relationships. It is distinct from perceptions such as physical attractiveness, and involves views of what is and what is not considered beautiful or attractive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Physical attractiveness</span> Aesthetic assessment of physical traits

Physical attractiveness is the degree to which a person's physical features are considered aesthetically pleasing or beautiful. The term often implies sexual attractiveness or desirability, but can also be distinct from either. There are many factors which influence one person's attraction to another, with physical aspects being one of them. Physical attraction itself includes universal perceptions common to all human cultures such as facial symmetry, sociocultural dependent attributes and personal preferences unique to a particular individual.

Implicit personality theory describes the specific patterns and biases an individual uses when forming impressions based on a limited amount of initial information about an unfamiliar person. While there are parts of the impression formation process that are context-dependent, individuals also tend to exhibit certain tendencies in forming impressions across a variety of situations. There is not one singular implicit personality theory utilized by all; rather, each individual approaches the task of impression formation in his or her own unique way. However, there are some components of implicit personality theories that are consistent across individuals, or within groups of similar individuals. These components are of particular interest to social psychologists because they have the potential to give insight into what impression one person will form of another.

Social perception is the study of how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people as sovereign personalities. Social perception refers to identifying and utilizing social cues to make judgments about social roles, rules, relationships, context, or the characteristics of others. This domain also includes social knowledge, which refers to one's knowledge of social roles, norms, and schemas surrounding social situations and interactions. People learn about others' feelings and emotions by picking up information they gather from physical appearance, verbal, and nonverbal communication. Facial expressions, tone of voice, hand gestures, and body position or movement are a few examples of ways people communicate without words. A real-world example of social perception is understanding that others disagree with what one said when one sees them roll their eyes. There are four main components of social perception: observation, attribution, integration, and confirmation.

The Dr. Fox effect is a correlation observed between teacher expressiveness, content coverage, student evaluation and student achievement. This effect also allows insight to other related effects and relationships between student achievement and evaluations of the teacher.

In social psychology, illusory superiority is a cognitive bias wherein a person overestimates their own qualities and abilities compared to other people. Illusory superiority is one of many positive illusions, relating to the self, that are evident in the study of intelligence, the effective performance of tasks and tests, and the possession of desirable personal characteristics and personality traits. Overestimation of abilities compared to an objective measure is known as the overconfidence effect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Negative affectivity</span> Personality variable

Negative affectivity (NA), or negative affect, is a personality variable that involves the experience of negative emotions and poor self-concept. Negative affectivity subsumes a variety of negative emotions, including anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness. Low negative affectivity is characterized by frequent states of calmness and serenity, along with states of confidence, activeness, and great enthusiasm.

Thin-slicing is a term used in psychology and philosophy to describe the ability to find patterns in events based only on "thin slices", or narrow windows, of experience. The term refers to the process of making very quick inferences about the state, characteristics or details of an individual or situation with minimal amounts of information. Research has found that brief judgments based on thin-slicing are similar to those judgments based on much more information. Judgments based on thin-slicing can be as accurate, or even more so, than judgments based on much more information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Assimilation and contrast effects</span>

The assimilation effect, assimilation bias or biased assimilation is a bias in evaluative judgments towards the position of a context stimulus, while contrast effects describe a negative correlation between a judgment and contextual information.

In psychology, a first impression is the event when one person first encounters another person and forms a mental image of that person. Impression accuracy varies depending on the observer and the target being observed. First impressions are based on a wide range of characteristics: age, race, culture, language, gender, physical appearance, accent, posture, voice, number of people present, economic status, and time allowed to process. The first impressions individuals give to others could greatly influence how they are treated and viewed in many contexts of everyday life.

Personality judgment is the process by which people perceive each other's personalities through acquisition of certain information about others, or meeting others in person. The purpose of studying personality judgment is to understand past behavior exhibited by individuals and predict future behavior. Theories concerning personality judgment focus on the accuracy of personality judgments and the effects of personality judgments on various aspects of social interactions. Determining how people judge personality is important because personality judgments often influence individuals' behaviors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheerleader effect</span> Psychological effect on perceptions of attractiveness

The cheerleader effect, also known as the group attractiveness effect or the friend effect, is a proposed cognitive bias which causes people to perceive individuals as 1.5–2.0% more attractive in a group than when seen alone. The first paper to report this effect was written by Drew Walker and Edward Vul, in 2014.

A zero-acquaintance situation requires a perceiver to make a judgment about a target with whom the perceiver has had no prior social interaction. These judgments can be made using a variety of cues, including brief interactions with the target, video recordings of the target, photographs of the target, and observations of the target's personal environments, among others. In zero-acquaintance studies, the target's actual personality is determined through the target's self-rating and/or ratings from close acquaintance(s) of that target. Consensus in ratings is determined by how consistently perceivers rate the target's personality when compared to other raters. Accuracy in ratings is determined by how well perceivers' ratings of a target compare to that target's self-ratings on the same scale, or to that target's close acquaintances' ratings of the target. Zero-acquaintance judgments are regularly made in day-to-day life. Given that these judgments tend to remain stable, even as the length of interaction increases, they can influence important interpersonal outcomes.

The false-uniqueness effect is an attributional type of cognitive bias in social psychology that describes how people tend to view their qualities, traits, and personal attributes as unique when in reality they are not. This bias is often measured by looking at the difference between estimates that people make about how many of their peers share a certain trait or behaviour and the actual number of peers who report these traits and behaviours.

References

  1. "Halo Effect: Definition and Examples". Simply Psychology. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  2. 1 2 Belludi, Nagesh (30 April 2013). "The Halo and Horns Effects [Rating Errors]". Right Attitudes. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
  3. 1 2 Kennon, Joshua (12 November 2011). "Mental Model: Horns Effect and Halo Effect". www.joshuakennon.com. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
  4. Long-Crowell, Erin. "The Halo Effect: Definition, Advantages & Disadvantages". Psychology 104: Social Psychology. study.com. Retrieved September 30, 2015.
  5. Nisbett, Richard E; Wilson, Timothy D (1977). "The halo effect: Evidence for unconscious alteration of judgments" (PDF). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. American Psychological Association. 35 (4): 250–56. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.35.4.250. hdl: 2027.42/92158 . S2CID   17867385.
  6. "halo | History, Art, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-02-03.
  7. Thorndike, EL (1920), "A constant error in psychological ratings", Journal of Applied Psychology, 4 (1): 25–29, doi:10.1037/h0071663
  8. "Halo Effect: Definition and Examples | Simply Psychology". www.simplypsychology.org. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  9. Glennie, Jonathan (3 May 2011). "Hugo Chávez's reverse-halo effect". The Guardian.
  10. Ostrove, Nancy; Sigall, Harold (1975). "Beautiful but Dangerous: Effects of Offender Attractiveness and Nature of the Crime on Juridic Judgment". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 31 (3): 410–14. doi:10.1037/h0076472.