A college lecturer from Belgium, who spoke English with a fairly strong accent, was filmed answering questions about his teaching. In one version he was warm, enthusiastic and respectful of his students. In the other he was cold, rigid and distrustful. Same man, same face, same accent, same gestures.
Students who watched the warm version rated his appearance, his mannerisms and even his accent as appealing. Students who watched the cold version found the same things irritating. Asked whether liking him had coloured those ratings, they insisted it had no effect. Those who saw the cold version went further: they were sure it worked the other way, that his accent and looks were what made them dislike him.
That's the halo effect. One strong impression spreads to everything else about a person, and you feel none of it happening. In dating, where first impressions do much of the early work, it can make an attractive or charming stranger seem kinder, more honest and more right for you than you have any way of knowing yet. It also explains why a trustworthy face says nothing about honesty, why your friends can forecast your relationship better than you can, and why the same glow helps once you know someone well.
Where the name comes from
The halo was first spotted in the army.
In 1920, Edward Thorndike, an American who studied how people learn, asked commanding officers to rate their soldiers on separate qualities: physique, intelligence, leadership, loyalty and character. The ratings hung together far more than they should have. A soldier who looked the part tended to be rated as clever, loyal and dependable too. Thorndike's verdict was that the correlations were "too high and too even". The officers were rating a general feeling about the man and spreading it around.
The name fits: like the gold ring painters put around a saint's head, one bright spot makes the whole figure glow. Daniel Kahneman's explains how the halo and its cousins shape snap judgments.
What good looks are supposed to tell you
Looks are the classic trigger. Shown photographs of strangers, people assumed the attractive ones had nicer personalities, better jobs and happier marriages ahead of them. The one exception was parenting: the attractive faces were expected to make worse parents.
When dozens of tests were pooled, the "beautiful is good" assumption turned out to be strongest for social skills and confidence, weaker for intelligence and mental health, and close to nothing for honesty and concern for others. Even our bias, then, mostly bets on attractive people being good company. It barely bets on them being good people.
And the reality? When attractive people's actual personalities were measured, the links were mostly trivial. Good-looking people were a little less lonely, less socially anxious, more popular and more socially skilled, and they had more sexual experience. On kindness, honesty and the rest of what makes a good partner, looks said almost nothing.
The halo even reaches the courtroom, and it can flip. In one classic test, mock jurors deciding a burglary case gave an attractive woman 2.8 years on average, against 5.2 years when her photograph was unattractive. In a swindle case, the attractive woman got 5.45 years against 4.35. Where her looks could have helped her commit the crime, the halo turned against her.
A tenth of a second
It all happens fast. Shown strangers' faces, people decided how attractive, likeable, trustworthy and competent they looked within a tenth of a second. Looking for longer barely changed the verdict. It mostly made people more confident in it.
And the trustworthy-looking face told them nothing. Judged from photographs, corporate criminals looked as trustworthy as honest executives, and military criminals as trustworthy as military heroes. When students were tempted to cheat on a test, the faces rated trustworthy cheated just as readily as the rest. Faces did carry a little real information about intelligence and how outgoing someone was. Honesty, the quality you need to know about, left no mark on them.
If faces are judged that fast, your dating photo matters, and you're not the best person to choose it. When people picked profile photos from a set of pictures of their own face, and from a set of a stranger's face, the photos chosen by someone else made better first impressions than the ones people chose for themselves. Let a friend pick yours. It's the halo used honestly: the same face, shown well.
Confidence wears a halo too
Faces are only the start. People who are more sure of themselves than their ability justifies tend to be seen as more competent, and they rise in status in a group. The confidence comes across in how they speak and carry themselves, and others read it as skill. When someone seems impressively sure of themselves, ask what they've done. How they said it is the halo talking.
Do the beautiful make better partners?
Looks buy trust as well. In a money game between strangers, attractive players were trusted more and handed more at the start. But attractive players who fell short of what others expected of them were punished harder than ordinary-looking players who did the same. The halo raises expectations, and the fall from it is steeper.
If good looks predicted a good partner, attractive people would have the longest marriages. The reverse turned up. People rated as more attractive in their high-school yearbook photos were married for shorter spells and more likely to divorce, and celebrities showed the same pattern. Attractive people were also less inclined to brush off other attractive options while in a relationship, which leaves more room for temptation.
None of that makes good looks a warning sign. It just means they're no guarantee either way.
Why your friends see more clearly
The halo also builds the feeling that you're two of a kind. Across 313 sets of tests, actual similarity drew strangers to each other, but in existing relationships only how alike people felt they were predicted attraction. How alike two partners were in fact made no measurable difference. Once you like someone, you see more of yourself in them than may be there. Your friends can see the differences you've stopped noticing.
When university students rated their dating relationships, they were more positive and more confident about the future than their roommates and parents were. They were also less accurate. A year later, the roommates and parents had predicted which relationships would last better than the couples themselves.
The couples had the information. Their own ratings of how good the relationship was predicted its future well. It was their forecasts that ran too bright, because they focused on the strengths and passed over the problems. A halo, in other words, sits between knowing something and acting on it.
How to see past the glow
Knowing about the halo is part of the cure. People given fake feedback that they'd done brilliantly or badly at a task held on to that impression even after being told the feedback was random, and so did the people who'd watched them. What cleared it was explaining how an impression hangs on after its evidence is gone. You've just had that explanation.
Name the bright trait. When you're dazzled, say to yourself what's doing it: the looks, the confidence, the job, the charm. Once it has a name, you can set it aside and ask what you know about the rest.
Rate the qualities separately. Thorndike's officers lumped everything together. Do the opposite. Is this person kind to people who can do nothing for them? Do they keep small promises? How do they handle being told no? Answer each one on its own evidence.
Argue the other side. Asking yourself why your first impression might be wrong works better than trying to be fair. People told to consider the opposite of their first impression judged more evenly than people who were just told to be unbiased. Chip and Dan Heath's turns this into a habit for big decisions, including the ones about people.
Give it time. A halo is strongest before you know someone. Weeks of ordinary days, bad moods and minor disappointments show you the person underneath it. Knowing someone well makes judgment sharper: two close friends' descriptions of a student matched each other, and the student's own view, far better than descriptions from strangers who had watched one short video of them.
Watch for charm on a schedule. Some people work the halo on purpose. Intimacy that arrives at speed, pressure to commit early and flattery that never lets up are signs to slow down, and the article on narcissistic behaviour linked below shows what to look for.
Ask your friends. They see you without your glasses on. If the people who know you best are less excited than you are, take that seriously. Annie Duke's shows how to build a small circle of people who'll tell you when you're fooling yourself.
When the halo helps
The halo has a good side, once you know someone. In dating couples followed for a year, those who saw their partner a little more generously than the partner saw themselves were more likely to stay together, even through conflict and doubts. The difference is timing. A generous view of someone you know well is an investment. A glowing view of someone you've known for three weeks is a guess.
It even changes what you see. Students on a summer archaeology dig, working side by side for weeks, rated each other's looks at the start and again at the end. By the end, how much they liked and respected someone had shifted how attractive they found them, and strangers rating the same people from photographs showed no such pull. Character had seeped into faces. That's a halo too, and a fair one, because it was earned.
When the glow turns
A halo can also run the other way. When newlywed couples were filmed talking, wives' overall feeling about their marriage coloured how they read their husbands' small moments, the flickers of warmth and the mild irritation, compared with what neutral observers saw. Strong anger was seen for what it was, whatever the bond. It's the small, ambiguous moments that the filter rewrites.
In a happy stretch, that works in your favour: a short reply reads as tiredness. In an unhappy one, the same filter turns a neutral sigh into contempt, and a whole person into their worst habit. Before you react to something small, ask what a neutral observer would have seen.
Seeing the whole person
The students who watched the cold lecturer were sure his accent had put them off. Their feelings came first, and their eyes followed. The same thing happens on a first date and in a long marriage, and it can run either way.
So treat the glow as a first guess. Before you decide how you feel about someone new, list three things you've seen them do, and notice how much of your picture is still filled in by the glow. With someone you've loved for years, run the check the other way: when something small annoys you, ask what a stranger would have seen. Then keep the generous view you've earned.
Charmed by someone who seems too good to be true? Warning Signs of Narcissistic Behaviour in a Relationship — why charming partners can be the hardest to read, and the signs that matter.
Wondering what does predict a lasting relationship? How to Find Your Perfect Life Partner — the signs that count once the first glow fades.
Know someone who's just met "the one" and keeps talking about their looks? Send them this. It takes a tenth of a second to form an impression, and a lot longer to check it.
Disclaimer: This article is general information about relationships.
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