Social and Intellectual Competence in Retrospect to the Halo Effect
Jessica Pegueros
University of California Riverside
Abstract
This paper explores 3 published articles that have yielded results from research conducted from studies that observe physical attraction and the halo effect. The Halo Effect refers to a concept that “beautiful-is-good” in which a positive attribute of an individual may influence other attributes when no other information is know. The standard assumption that people who are considered more attractive also process other positive character traits such as intelligence, trustworthiness, and reliability versus the contrary of arrogant, materialist and naive. These articles vary in their procedures, however, they all had results that showed the halo effect. In the current study, we examined the halo effect by taking two different photos (attractive vs unattractive) and giving university students a survey about the person with no other supplementary information. The results, similar to those of the articles previously mentioned, have shown the halo effect.
Social and Intellectual Competence in Retrospect to the Halo Effect
The halo effect refers to the cognitive bias in which a general impression of a person dictates perceptions of their character. Alteration of judgements based on the initial glance and evaluation of a person. Frequently, the tendency to assume that the possession of one dominantly positive character trait goes hand in hand with the possession of other positive traits. Studying the halo effect is important because we want to find a connection between how people think and whether or not physically attractive people receive better treatment than unattractive people. Examining the finding to studies that have yielded results from halo effect experiments will allow us to study and potentially change the way society thinks about physical appearances being a dominant strength. Previous research suggests that being attractive yields certain benefits when no other information is known. In certain studies sex takes a significant role in the findings.
Literature review
For example, Nisbett and Wilson (1977) presented the question as whether or not global evaluations of an individual influence evaluations of character traits. They also question whether or not individuals are aware of the role that global evaluations play on other evaluations they make. Nisbett and Wilson suggest that people use global evaluations to assume that people poses specific character traits without any other information available to them. To Nisbett and Wilson this is “the strong interpretation” of the halo effect. To conduct their experiment they gathered college students and told them they were participating in a study that was looking to see whether or not the participants ratings of a professor either behaving in a likeable manner or in an unlikeable manner would match ratings of students who have taken a course with the same professor. They focuses on four traits, likeability, attractiveness, mannerism and accent. Nisbett and Wilson were also interested in whether or not attractiveness and mannerism played a part in the likeability of the professor. From this research they concluded that the likeable rating for the professor played a large role in the influence of his other traits, however the participants in the study did not believe this. An approximately equal number of participants in the study believed that the ratings of attractiveness, mannerism and accent, either increased, decreased or played no part on the likeability portion of the experiment. From this research, support for the strong halo effect is concluded since the participants had sufficient information about other traits the professor possessed to make an educated opinion on the professor as a whole.
Another example is Anderson and Nida (1978), and their experiment which concentrated on the effect that physical attractiveness had on evaluations of opposite and same sex individuals. They conducted their experiment by mirroring Landy and Sigall (1974), where they had male participants rate the quality of essays that were supposedly written by either an attractive or unattractive womens whose photo they were presented. The findings showed that the males had a bias towards the attractive women and rated the attractive womens essays higher regardless of the quality of the essay. Anderson and Nida wanted to see if the findings would be similar if it was now the same sex rating and being rated. Anderson and Nida used a 3 x 3 x 2 x 2 factorial design with 4 independent variables to test their hypothesis. They used participants who thought they were rating essays from a TV competition. They were tasked with rating an essay of either high, medium, or low quality and viewed a photo of the “writer” who was either low, medium or high in attractiveness. They hypothesized that a better essay with a more attractive writer will be highest rated, as well as ratings of essays written by members of the opposite sex will be influenced by attractiveness more so than essays that were written by members of the same sex. They found that both men and women rated essays from attractive members of the opposite sex higher than unattractive individuals. When essays from the same sex were being evaluated, evaluators favored essays written by medium attractive people versus low or high attractiveness. However, even though better essays were rated higher in general, individuals of low attractiveness received lower essay ratings. These findings support Nisbett and Wilson's (1997) idea of a strong halo effect.
Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, and Longo (1991) sought to investigate whether people believe that physically attractive individuals possess other positive traits, they did this by assessing the findings from 76 other similar studies in which the participants did not know the individuals whose traits they were rating. They concluded that, attractive individuals are rated higher in specific areas such as, personality, success, social competence, interpersonal ease, and extraversion, however, the extent to which attractive people are rated high does depend on the trait being accessed. Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, and Longo use the “Implicit Personality Theory” which refers to unconscious biases we make about which traits occur frequently in pairs that allow us to make inferences about individuals we know little about. They hypothesize that attractive individuals will be rated higher overall but not across all traits and the more information that the participants of the study have about the individual in question, the less weight their attractiveness has on ratings. Their findings from their research conclude that physical attractiveness of a person influences how their other traits are perceived by strangers without any supplementary background information. Again providing support for the halo effect.
The current study will examine how attractive individuals receive higher marks overall when no other information besides their appearance is present. Specifically, we first hypothesize that the attractive photo will be ranked higher in social competence than the unattractive photo. Hypothesis two, the attractive photo will be ranked higher in intellectual competence than the unattractive photo. Hypothesis three, when scores in intellectual competence rise so will scores in social competence. Hypothesis four, when scores in self esteem are low, rankings in others intellectual competence will decrease.
Method
Participants
We conducted a survey using 124 University of California Riverside PSYCH 12 students 73% female and 26% male, between the ages of 18 and 32 of various ethnicities 94% are psychology majors within their 1st and 4th years of completing their undergraduate degree. All of which agreed to participate voluntarily without compensation.
Measures
The questionnaire given to the participants was broken down into 5 sections. The trait ratings questions were chosen to show relationship to the halo effect and altered specifically to fit this study. It included 6 dimensions by Eagly et al. (1991): social competence made up of 3 items had a Cronbach’s Alpha of .91, intellectual competence made up of 5 items had a Cronbach’s Alpha of .89, concern for others was made up of 4 items had a Cronbach’s Alpha of .77, integrity made up of 2 items had a Cronbach’s Alpha of .61, adjustment made up of 5 items had a Cronbach’s Alpha of .83, and power made up of 2 items had a Cronbach’s Alpha of .87. In it included a Narcissistic Personality Inventory otherwise known as (NPI-16; Ames, Rose, & Anderson, 2006). This measured the participants differences in narcissistic tendencies. The Narcissistic Personality Inventory scored on 8 items had a Cronbach’s Alpha of .54. Next, was the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965): this measures the participants differences in evaluations about themselves. Scored on 5 items, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale had a Cronbach’s Alpha of .58.The final section on the questionnaire was the Big Five Personality Inventory, it included 5 dimensions by (Rammstedt & John, 2007): extraversion made up of 2 items had a Cronbach’s Alpha of -4.4, agreeableness made up of 2 items had a Cronbach’s Alpha of -.48, conscientiousness made up of 2 items had a Cronbach’s Alpha of -.57, neuroticism made up of 2 items had a Cronbach’s Alpha of -2.49 and openness made up of 2 items had a Cronbach’s Alpha of -1.21. Demographic items were also recorded.
Procedure
Each participant was randomly assigned a number and a experiment condition (unattractive photo vs attractive photo). The first section was ratings of the photo on a 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much) scale on specific personality traits that fall within the subscales of, intellectual competence, social competence, concern for others, integrity, adjustment, and power. Next, was a Ten Item Personality Inventory otherwise known as the Big Five Personality Inventory, which measured two items per trait one being reversed scored on, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness. Followed by a Narcissistic Personality Inventory and a Self-esteem scale.
Results
An independent sample t-test revealed higher rankings in social competence for the attractive photo (M= 5.15 , SD= 1.3) compared to the unattractive photo (M = 3.91 , SD = 1.3), t(120) = -5.23, p <.01, Cohen's d = 1. An independent sample t-test revealed higher rankings in intellectual competence for the attractive photo (M = 5.20 , SD = .83) compared to the unattractive photo (M = 4.64 , SD = 1.13), t(120) = – 3.2, p = .002, Cohen's d = .62. A pearson product correlation test showed that intellectual competence and social competence were positively correlated. r(121) = .485, p < .01. A pearson product correlation failed to show a significant correlation between self-esteem and intellectual competence. r(119) = -.013, p = .890. After testing the differences in Fisher’s r to z test, we found a non significant difference, z = 4.18, p > .05.
Discussion
In this study, we were looking to answer the question as too if, given the results of previous studies, using the questionnaire specifically altered to fit the design of this experiment will yield similar results. Specifically interested in examining scores on social and intellectual competence, we found support in our data to uphold 3 out of 4 of our hypothesis.The results from two independent sample t-tests showed that the attractive photo was ranked higher in social and intellectual competence. A pearson product correlation test showed that intellectual competence and social competence were positively correlated and when ratings in one particular area, either social or intellectual competence, rises so will its counterpart. Our results from an additional pearson product correlation test, however, yielded a non significant difference between low self esteem scores in the participant and low intellectual competence ratings for the condition. Our results agree with the previous studies on physical attractiveness and the halo effect.
References
Ames, D.R., Rose, P., Anderson, C.P. (2006). The NPI-16 as a short measure of narcissism
[Abstract]. Journal of Personality, 40, 440-450.
Anderson, R., & Nida, S. A. (1978). Effect on Physical Attractiveness on Opposite- and
Same-Sex Evaluations. Journal of Personality, 46, 401-413.
Eagly, A.H., Ashmore, R.D., Makhijani, M.G., Longo, L.C. (1991). What Is Beautiful Is
Good…: A Meta-Analytic Review of Research on the Physical Attractiveness Stereotype. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 109-128.
Nisbett, R.E., & Wilson, T.D. (1977). The Halo Effect: Evidence for Unconscious Alteration of
Judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 250-256.
Rammsted, B., & John, O. P. (2007). Measuring personality in one minute or less: A 10-item
short version of the Big Five Inventory in English and German [Abstract]. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 203-212.
Rosenburg, M. (n.d.). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Figures
Figure 1. Correlation between intellectual and social competence. This figure illustrates that with no other information presented to participants they assumed that an attractive photo will rank highly in intellectual and social competence.