1. Social Psychology: Why We Do Dumb or Irrational Things: 10 Brilliant Social Psychology Experiments

2. Teacher’s example and expectations….. Experiments Experiments 1.Define the concept 2.Name the researchers and date(year) 3.Explanation of the experiment 4.Explanation of the results/conclusion 5.Provide an example of the concept you just taught!!

3. Halo Effect Definition: Halo errors occur when one’s overall evaluation of an employee, or of a trait such as their friendliness, biases ratings of their specific work-related behaviors, such as their reliability. (Myers, pg 505)

4. 1. Halo Effect: When Your Own Mind is a Mystery Nisbett and Wilson (1977) Examined the way student participants made judgments about a lecturer Students were told the research was investigating teacher evaluations. Divided into two groups who were going to watch two different videos of the same lecturer One group watched the lecturer answer a series of questions in an extremely warm and friendly manner. Second group saw exactly the same person answer exactly the questions in a cold and distant manner.

5. 1. Halo Effect: When Your Own Mind is a Mystery The character of the lecturers 1. More likeable or 2. More authoritarian figure who didn’t like teaching at all. Subjects were asked to rate the lecturer on the following characteristics: 1. Physical appearance 2. Mannerisms 3. Even his accent (mannerisms were kept the same across both videos).

6. Results/conclusion: Consistent with the halo effect: Students who saw: 1.The ‘warm’ incarnation of the lecturer rated him more attractive, his mannerisms more likeable and even is accent as more appealing. 2.This was unsurprising as it backed up previous work on the halo effect. Unconscious judgments The surprise is that students had no clue whatsoever why they gave one lecturer higher ratings, even after they were given every chance. After the study it was suggested to them that how much they liked the lecturer might have affected their evaluations. Despite this, most said that how much they liked the lecturer from what he said had not affected their evaluation of his individual characteristics at all.

7. Halo Effect The idea that global evaluations about a person (e.g. she is likeable) bleed over into judgments about their specific traits (e.g. she is intelligent).

8. Who Cares?? For Example: Politicians Fashion industry Marketers Sales people Evaluators for employment (Halo error = evaluator’s vulnerability)