Halo Effect and Horns Effect
It is a cognitive bias that causes you to allow one trait, either good (halo) or bad (horns), to overshadow other traits, behaviors, actions, or beliefs. Horns effects and halo effects happen all the time and it is a subconscious activity.
You can notice this effect in action during interviews, performance evaluation, etc..?
The halo effect is a type of cognitive bias in which our overall impression of a person influences how we feel and think about their character. ... One great example of the halo effect in action is our overall impression of celebrities.
When we take interviews, the Halo effect push you to take favorable decision for a person who made a good first impression. We tend to negate or ignore mistakes from people whom we have halo effect.
The Horns effect is exactly the opposite of Halo effect. This happens when someone create a negative first impression. No matter what they do, we tend to see the flip side of everything.
The halo effect is a term for a consumer's favoritism toward a line of products due to positive experiences with other products by this maker. The halo effect is correlated to brand strength and brand loyalty and contributes to brand equity.
Like wise, when consumers have an unfavorable experience with a product, they correlate that negative experience with everything associated with that brand.
When we are under the influence of Halo or Horns effect, it is re-inforced by our Confirmation bias. Confirmation bias will look for evidence that support our believes and ignore what is contradictory to our believes. We do all these subconsciously, that is, we are not aware that we are biased.
Can you imagine the damage these effects could do in our decision making process. One thing to watch out is interviews. In an interview, we are forced judge a person in a short time span. Think about these effects in action!
If you want to read more about subconscious biases and its impact on you read the related articles in the reference link below.
References:
Product Management | Agility | Technology Management
4yNice one Ebin. Personally l would look at the process more than my feeling especially after being aware of Cognitive bias in hiring or interviewing. At the same time an intuitive feeling is not to be entirely ignored and the other aspects shared are certainly useful. Cheers