Why We Trust Good-Looking People

There's a line that does the rounds online: "Good-looking people are wonderful; ugly people are up to no good." In everyday life, we all acknowledge that being attractive carries an unbeatable advantage. The very same gesture towards a girl he likes earns a good-looking man the label "sweet guy," while a more ordinary-looking one might be written off as a "creep." The Halo Effect naturally puts appearance front and centre — but have you ever wondered whether, even if you'd never knowingly judge a person by their looks, you too have already been shaped by this psychological phenomenon? That phenomenon is the Halo Effect. Let's take a look at what the Halo Effect actually is, and why it gives us a tendency to judge people by their appearance.

Judging People by Their Looks

In the "sweet guy" versus "creep" example above, we automatically link appearance to personality or motive. A great deal of psychological research has found that people judge more attractive individuals to be more sincere, more reliable and more loyal in character than plainer-looking ones. People tend to assume that a beautiful woman or a handsome man is more willing to behave altruistically — that is, more willing to help others. When it comes to ability, attractiveness is taken to be linked with intelligence, academic results, job or earning potential, and social standing. People also routinely view attractive individuals as having better social skills and richer social lives. In many situations, appearance bears no connection at all to other personal traits such as personality or ability — and we all know this perfectly well. So why are people swayed by the Halo Effect?

The Halo Effect and Judging by Appearance

The Halo Effect is a cognitive bias. Under its influence, we use a first impression to infer the other traits of a person or thing, even when those traits have nothing to do with that first impression. Our evaluations and perceptions of people often hinge on the first impression they give us — and that first impression is very often a person's appearance. When someone is good-looking, their appearance is like a halo above their head, and on the strength of that halo alone you judge them to be a good person. The Horn Effect is the Halo Effect's mirror image: it refers to how, when a person's appearance falls below standard, it acts like a wicked horn, leading us to decide at first sight that they are a bad person.

The Halo Effect arises because, when making decisions, people rely heavily on heuristics. In daily life, we cannot take in all the available information; even when we do have a great deal of it, we cannot process it all. To make decisions in a short space of time with the least possible energy, people automatically think and decide by way of various heuristics. This capacity was vital to survival in ancient times, which is why it has been passed down to the present day.

Back to the Halo Effect: human beings are extraordinarily complex creatures, so when trying to understand someone we inevitably draw on heuristics to help ourselves make a decision. The first impression becomes one of the reference points we use, and — going by your own experience — an attractive person's other traits are usually positive too. So you treat them as a kind, funny, helpful good person.

Judging people by their looks also ties into another phenomenon, the self-fulfilling prophecy (Self-Fulfilling Prophecy). When most people are inclined to associate appearance with ability and personality, better-looking people naturally get more opportunities in society to develop and showcase their abilities. Imagine you are a boss: if you are swayed by the Halo Effect, you stand a good chance of leaning towards hiring the better-looking candidate; under the influence of the Halo Effect, you may also be more willing to befriend such people, and to read their behaviour as kindness and genuine affection. It follows that the self-fulfilling prophecy, to a certain degree, reinforces the Halo Effect — turning a cognitive bias into reality.

Although the self-fulfilling prophecy appears to rationalise judging people by their looks, it by no means makes this kind of social labelling reasonable. Like other cognitive biases, the Halo Effect offers us a quick shortcut in our reasoning — but understanding people by appearance alone is bound to bury talent and rob others of their opportunities. In modern society, cognitive biases have had many negative effects on the decisions humans make. So when we come to understand why certain prejudices arise in us, what we should do is not to rationalise them, but to recognise that they exist — to think rationally about whether our own behaviour really serves our best interests in the situation at hand, and to make the best choices we can in our lives.