Halo effect materialises when we perceive people in terms of the concepts of the good and bad; “good” people possess all the good qualities, whereas “bad” people possess all the bad qualities (McKenna, 2006). The halo effect has a tendency to exclude other relevant characteristics of the person. For example, the interviewer will perceive a candidate’s good qualities if the applicant will arrive punctually for interview, will be smart dressed and with good manners. However, the interviewer then will not take much emphasis on the candidate’s qualifications or experience for the job. The problem with halo effect is that the perceiver may observe only those characteristics which support the original judgement about person.
Halo effect also can work as a reverse process: this is referred to as the “horns effect”. It has been suggested that “our overall attitudes towards others can to a large extent be determined by our evaluations of them a long three dimensions: activity (active versus passive); strength (strong versus weak); and evaluative (good versus bad). The third dimension is considered the most influential.” (Osgood, Suci & Tannenbaum, 1957) This is where evaluation of other person is perceived from negative characteristic. For example, if the same candidate for a job will be arriving late for the interview, the interviewer will see him as a poor time-keeper and unreliable, even if the candidate would have a good excuse for being late.
Perceptual defence is the tendency to avoid or screen out certain stimuli that are perceptually disturbing or threatening (Mullins, 2007). People may tend to select information which is supportive of their point of view and choose not to accept opposing information. For example: A manager has decided to promote a member of staff against of advice of the colleagues may select only sympathetic information which supports the decision and ignore less favourable information which questions that decision. It means that people are inclined on what they want and they think is right.
Projection is the tendency to see others as having characteristics more like our own than is really the case (Feshback and Singer, 1957). It means that individuals are tending to transfer their own emotional or motivational state on to others. For example, in an experiment where subjects were awaiting the receipt of a painful electrical shock, it was found that those subjects who reported feeling fear themselves were the subjects who predicted others would be afraid. In other experiments it was shown that those who where asked to predict the behaviour of others usually tended to make predictions more like their own behaviour than the behaviour of the person about whom the prediction was made. These experiments may be explained as follows: people operate the ego defence mechanism of projection by accrediting to other individuals the motivation and sensation that the possess themselves but feel uncomfortable about. Counting on our own knowledge, actions are made with errors because of lack of knowing the internal circumstances of other person.
Logical error is the assumption being that certain traits are always found together (McKenna, 2006). For example, students on a psychology course were given descriptions of a guest speaker before he addressed to class. He was described to one half of the class as “warm” and to the other half as “cold”. The lecturer then entered the class and led a discussion for about 20 minutes. When he left the room the students were asked to describe him. The students who were told that he was going to be “cold” were more likely to attribute to him traits such as self-centredness, and sociability, humorlessness, and ruthlessness than were the students who were told he was “warm”. The students who thought of the lecturer as “warm” were also more likely to interact with him during the discussion (Kelley, 1950). This means that changes in person observation occurred from varying even small signals, leading to a totally different view of the person.
The process of perceptual selection is based on both internal and external factors.
Internal factors, such as personality, learning, intelligence, motivation, interest, etc., will give rise to a preference to perceive certain stimuli with a willingness to respond in certain ways. As well as the needs of individual and previous experiences, as well as language. Language is part of the culture people experience and environment around us. Culture differences are relevant because they emphasise the impact of learning ad perceiving people and their surrounding. For example, if person would go to another country and would not know the language very well, the perception of the people in that country would be different if he would understand those people. This means that there are many factors which could influence individuals understanding and perception of others. In this example it seen that even language could be a barrier towards to accurately perceive and make judgements about other people. But also external factors influence people perception.
External factors refer to the nature and characteristics of the stimuli. There is usually an inclination to give more attention to stimuli which are, for example: large, moving, loud, contrasted, repeated or stands out from the background. For example: it more likely that perceiver will notice familiar face first in the crowd of people all dressed in the same style uniforms than unknown individuals. In this context it is meant that people will probably have better stimulus in recognising and perceiving someone they know.
To conclude, there are many different factors which may influence the accuracy of interpersonal perception and the judgements persons make about other individuals. There are internal factors (like personality, intelligence etc) and external factors (who refers to nature and characteristics of the stimuli), as well as features like stereotyping, the halo effect, horns effect, perceptual defence, projection and logical error, which can manipulate the way how accurate is the perception and judgements of the individuals about other persons.
Bibliography
Books:
Burns, B. (1992). Percepts, Concepts and Categories: The representation and processing of information. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers B.V
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Mullins, L.J. (2007). Management and Organisational Behaviour. 8th Ed. Essex: Pearson Education Ltd
Osgood, C.E., Suci, G.E., & Tannenbaum, P.H. (1957). The Measurement of meaning. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
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Tajfel, H., & Turner, J.C. (1985). The social identity theory of inter-group behaviour. In S. Worchel & W.G. Austin (EDS.), Psychology of inter-group relations. 2nd Ed. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
Journals:
Feshback, S., & Singer, D. (1957). The effects of a vicarious aggressive activity. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63. p. 381-385.
Kelley, H.H. (1950). The warm-cold variable in the first impressions of person. Journal of personality, 18. p. 431-439
Krueger, J. (1991). Accentuation effects and illusory change in exemplar based category learning. European Journal of Social Psychology, 21. p. 37-48
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http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/MC10220/visindex.html [accessed 6 January 2009]