The horn effect, closely related to the
halo effect
The halo effect (sometimes called the halo error) 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. The halo effect is "the name given to the p ...
, is a form of
cognitive bias
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm (philosophy), norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the ...
that causes one's perception of another to be unduly influenced by a single negative trait.
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.
Etymology
The term is derived from the word "horn" and refers to the
devil
A devil is the mythical personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conce ...
's horns. This is in contrast to the word halo and the
halo effect
The halo effect (sometimes called the halo error) 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. The halo effect is "the name given to the p ...
, based on the concept of a
saint's halo.
In a 1920 study published by Thorndike
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 and to color the judgments of the qualities by this general feeling".
Alternate terminology
It is sometimes called the ''horns effect'',
[ ''reverse-halo effect'', or ''devil effect''.
]
Bias in action
The horn effect occurs when "individuals believe that negative traits are connected to each other."[ 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.
* '']The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' wrote of the devil effect in relation to Hugo Chavez
Hugo or HUGO may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Hugo (film), ''Hugo'' (film), a 2011 film directed by Martin Scorsese
* Hugo Award, a science fiction and fantasy award named after Hugo Gernsback
* Hugo (franchise), a children's media franchise ...
: "Some leaders can become so demonised that it's impossible to assess their achievements and failures in a balanced way."burglary
Burglary, also called breaking and entering (B&E) or housebreaking, is a property crime involving the illegal entry into a building or other area without permission, typically with the intention of committing a further criminal offence. Usually ...
and a swindle. The burglary involved a woman illegally obtaining a key and stealing $2,200; the swindle involved a woman manipulating a man to invest $2,200 in a nonexistent corporation. The results showed that when the offense was not related to attractiveness (as in the burglary) the unattractive defendant was punished more severely than the attractive one. However, when the offense was related to attractiveness (the swindle), the attractive defendant was punished more severely than the unattractive one. The study imputes that the usual leniency given to the attractive woman (as a result of the halo effect) was negated or reversed when the nature of the crime involved her looks.
See also
* Splitting (psychology)
Splitting, also called binary thinking, dichotomous thinking, black-and-white thinking, all-or-nothing thinking, or thinking in extremes, is the failure in a person's thinking to bring together the dichotomy of both perceived positive and negative ...
Explanatory notes
References
{{Biases
Cognitive biases