If three presidential candidates, with varying visual characteristics and varying campaign promises, then the candidate with the second best visual characteristics representing leadership traits, and the second most voted campaign promise will win the election. This is because the Halo Effect will cause voters to generalize from a person’s appearance, though it will balance out with the campaign promise.

Leading Questions in our Project

 

-What are some of the visual traits students feel best represent leadership?

-What are some campaign promises students feel are very important?

-How much bias will visual traits create, through the halo effect?

-How will this bias affect the result of a survey in the format of an election?

-Will this generalization be significant enough to cause problems?

-How much can this affect elections within municipalities, cities, provinces/states, and countries?

 

Hasty and subconscious generalizations

 

Hasty and subconscious generalizations are quick and usually incorrect judgements of someone based on certain traits. They are often not realized by the person generalizing, and can cause bias towards people or groups. One type of this is known as the Halo Effect, which we will be describing in this project.

 

History of the Halo Effect

 

The term "Halo Effect" was first found by psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1920. In his study, Thorndike found that when military officers rated their soldiers, a positive or negative impression in one area (like physical appearance) influenced their evaluations of unrelated traits (like intelligence or character). This led him to propose that people often allow one characteristic to influence their overall judgment.

 

The Halo Effect

 

The halo effect is a psychological phenomenon where our overall impression of a person, product or company influences our judgement on their specific traits. In other words, if we view someone or something positively in one area, we tend to perceive their other qualities more favourably, even though there is no direct connection between the two qualities. The halo effect is a cognitive bias that transfers opinions of something from one area to another. It can occur in many places, including political elections. There are many ways it can happen, including physical appearance creating a positive bias towards a person. This can also make actions caused by people to be viewed differently depending on their personality or appearance. The halo effect can cause significant changes based on first impressions of an overall view of a person or group of people. Generalizations through the halo effect usually pertain to unrelated criteria, such as a person’s leadership skills being judged based on how visually appealing they are. When forming opinions or making judgments, the brain tends to rely on general impressions rather than specific details. This can result in:

 

• Overgeneralization: You form an opinion on something or someone based on limited information

 

• Unconscious bias: You're not always aware that your positive impression in one area is influencing your overall judgment.

 

Experiments by multiple scientists (in citations) show evidence of visual appearance influencing a person's viewpoint on another person.

 

Types of the Halo Effect

 

There are 2 main types of the Halo Effect:

 

1. Positive Halo Effect: If a person, brand or company is perceived positively in one area, that positive perception spreads to its other areas
2. Negative Halo Effect (Horn Effect): If a person, brand or company is perceived negatively in one area, that negative perception spreads to its other areas

 

Examples of the Halo Effect

 

1. At work: 

If an employee is good at one area, like speaking, then their boss may think that they are good at other aspects without actual evidence.

2. Advertisements:

If a celebrity makes a product and makes advertisements about it, people might assume it is high quality even if they have not tested it out themselves

 

Presidential Character Traits

 

Visual effects people feel best to represent these characteristics can lead to a hasty generalization about their leadership skills. 

 

• A strong vision for the country's future
• An ability to put their times in the perspective of history
• Effective communication skills
• The courage to make unpopular decisions
• Crisis management skills
• Character and integrity
• Wise appointments
• An ability to work with Congress

We used courage, integrity, intelligence, and many others for survey purposes.

Some other questions

• What are some influencing factors that could affect the halo effect? Age group? Gender? 
• How would this procedure have gone if the test subjects were different in these areas?

Independent: Survey Questions

Dependent: Survey Answers

Controlled: Surveyed people's age group

 

 

 

PROCEDURE A

 

1. Create a survey, inquiring people's viewpoints on visual traits.
2. Use convenience sampling, sampling everyone you could, with a minimum of 20 participants.
3. Compile the data, and proceed to Procedure B.

 

PROCEDURE B

 

1. Procure three presidential candidates, each with varying characteristics based on appearance, and assign them campaign promises.

1. Data will be collected through an additional survey.

2. Least visually appealing traits, most appealing campaign promises.
3. Second most visually appealing traits, second most appealing campaign promises
4. Most visually appealing traits, least appealing campaign promises

2. Use a stratified sample, surveying 40 people at minimum
3. Compile the data and analyze the results.

In survey A, Integrity was the most picked characteristic out of all of them, at 33.33% and 8 people chose it. Accountability was next, at 29.2% and 7 people picking it. Next was intelligence at 4 people choosing it, and then it is confidence with 3 people, with 16.7% and 12.5% respectively. Reflective and Honesty both only had 1 person, and the rest got no votes. The question about campaign promises had a bigger majority. Reduce inflation rates got 58% and 14 people who said that it was a good campaign promise. This will impact the people's votes later in the second survey. 33.33%, or 8 people chose healthcare, and housebuilding and increasing salary both got 1 person. The results of the second poll depended and were built on the first survey’s results, taking into account the opinions recorded on the first. 

 

Through the results of the first survey, we created three individuals through these standards. 

#1. Traits representing integrity and/or accountability (most voted), house building (least voted) Danielle Figgans

#2. Traits representing intelligence (second most most voted), reduce healthcare costs (second most voted) Randy Bell

#3. Randomized traits, reduce inflation (most voted) Ethan Harris

 

For the second survey, most people chose Danielle Figgans, coming in at 19 people or 47.5% of the people chose her. This means our hypothesis was correct and the individual with the visual traits and the campaign promise in between the others got the majority of the votes. Next comes Randy Bell, who got 11 people to vote for him. And lastly is Ethan Harris, who got 10 people to vote for him. This means that the person who was the most charismatic and charming but did not have a good campaign promise got the lowest amount of votes. 

 

Based on our experiment, the individual with a balance between traits representing leadership and a campaign promise favored by the public has a higher chance of being elected than people on the ends of the spectrum. This supports our hypothesis that the individual with a balance would receive the most votes, even though the person with the most voted campaign promise (more important than appearance) was also in the election. This could have a variety of causes, the most likely of which being the Halo effect. The results prove that the Halo effect does have a significant effect on the election. No one voted for house building as a solid campaign promise, though when placed with a candidate with appealing traits, it was voted for by 25% of the population. On the opposite end of the voting, the individual with the least appealing traits, but the most voted campaign promise, also received close to 10 votes (11 to be exact), despite having the most voted campaign promise. This is likely because of the application of the reverse halo effect (horn effect) causing one to think that a person isn’t a good leader because of their appearance. The one who received the most votes, however, provided a balance between characteristics and campaign promise.

 

By averaging the amount of participants that voted for reduced healthcare costs and the amount of voters that voted for the candidates who had campaign promises that were voted less, we can average them out to get that around 72.5%+33.3%/2 ≈ 52.9% of the population were in part swayed by the halo effect.

 

In conclusion, our hypothesis was correct; the individual with the visual traits and the campaign promise in between the others got the majority of the votes. We have learned that the halo effect does not have a big impact on the person's answer as we thought it would.

 

The halo effect, as stated in the research, has a variety of applications and varies from person to person, in workplace, school, or political enviornments. The application we chose to write about is within elections, where unrelated characteristics, such as visual ones, can create a change in a person's view on a candidate. This can lead to a variety of effects, such as a leader being selected based on their visual traits.

 

Some sources of error during the experiment may include some individuals being less affected by the halo effect, or them knowing the experiment was based on visual traits, which can create a margin of error. Some other factors could include people not taking the surveys seriously, or the new recipients of the survey not sharing the same general opinions as of the first one. Age group, survey recipient perceptions, or other influencing factors could create a source of error.

 

In APA Format

 

References

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(n.d.). https://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-103126502/stock-photo-honest-man

Cherry, K. (2024, July 15). The Halo Effect in Psychology. Verywell Mind. Retrieved March 6, 2025, from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-halo-effect-2795906

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The Halo Effect: Evidence for Unconscious Alteration of Judgments. (n.d.). University of Michigan Library. Retrieved March 7, 2025, from https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/92158/TheHaloEffect.pdf

Kahneman, D. (2013). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Kelly, R. C. (n.d.). Halo Effect: Overview, History and Examples. Investopedia. Retrieved March 6, 2025, from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/halo-effect.asp

Moore, F. (n.d.). Halo effect. Wikipedia. Retrieved March 2, 2025, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

Nikolopoulou, K. (2023, April 26). Hasty Generalization Fallacy | Definition & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved March 2, 2025, from https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/hasty-generalization-fallacy/

Presidential Character. (n.d.). American Government. https://www.ushistory.org/gov/7e.asp?srsltid=AfmBOoowSsTikgyoNv7-NpPim-hMlzx0qG4cbPVzAR88cGmDAt3byd4W

Swayed by the Halo Effect. (n.d.). Psychology Today. Retrieved March 2, 2025, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/halo-effect

Unconscious bias. (n.d.). Royal Society. Retrieved March 6, 2025, from https://royalsociety.org/~/media/policy/Publications/2015/unconscious-bias-briefing-2015.pdf

Unconscious Biases. (n.d.). University of Victoria. Retrieved March 6, 2025, from https://www.uvic.ca/equity/employment-equity/bias/index.php

Whitten, C. (2024, June 22). How the Halo Effect Influences Your Daily Life. WebMD. Retrieved March 6, 2025, from https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-is-halo-effect

 

Thank you to our science fair provider for giving us the opportunity to participate in the science fair. 

Thank you to all the people who answered our surveys.