Halo effect and selective perception are the shortcuts in judging others Explain?

Answer 1

We use a number of shortcuts when we judge others. Perceiving and interpreting what others so is burdensome. As a result, individuals develop techniques for making the task more manageable. These techniques are frequently valuable - they allow us to make accurate perception rapidly and provide valid data for making predictions. However, they are not foolproof. They can and do get us into trouble.

Selective Perception:

Any characteristic that makes a person, object, or event stand out will increase the probability that it will be perceived. Why? Because it is impossible for us to assimilate everything we see - only certain stimuli can be taken in. This tendency explains why some people may be reprimanded by their boss for doing something that, when done by another employee, goes unnoticed. Because we can't observe everything going on around us, we engage in selective perception.

Dearborn and Simon performed a perceptional study in which 23 business executives read a comprehension case describing the organization and activities of a steel company. Of the 23 executives, 6 were in sales, 5 in production, 4 in accounting, and 8 in miscellaneous functions. Each manager was asked to write down the most important problem he found in the case. Eighty three percent of the sales executives rated sales important; only 29 percent of the others did so. This, along with other results of the study, led the researchers to conclude that the participants perceived aspects of a situation that were specifically related to the activities and goals of the unit to which they were attached. Thus, when the stimuli are ambiguous, as in the steel company case, perception tends to be influenced more by an individual's base of interpretation than by the stimulus itself.

But how does selectivity works as a shortcut in judging other people? Because we can not assimilate all that we observe, we take in bits and pieces, But those bits and pieces are not chosen randomly; rather, they are selectively chosen according to our interests, background experience, and attitudes. Selective perception allow us to "speed-read" others, but not without the risk of drawing an inaccurate picture. Because we see what we want to see, we can draw unwarranted conclusions from an ambiguous situation.

Halo Effect:

When we draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic, such as intelligence, sociability, or appearance, a halo effect is operating. This phenomenon frequently occurs when students appraise their classroom instructor. Students may give prominence to a single trait such as enthusiasm and allow their entire evaluation to be tainted by how they judge the instructor on that one trait. Thus, an instructor may be quiet, assured, knowledgeable, and highly qualified, but if his style lacks zeal, the students would probably give him low rating.

The propensity for the halo effect to operate is not random. Research suggests that it is likely to be most extreme when traits to be perceived are ambiguous in behavioral terms, when the traits have moral overtones, and when the perceiver is judging traits with which he or she has had limited experience.