The Halo, Reverse Halo and Horn Effect

Have you ever wondered why so many in the advertising space love casting attractive people in their commercials?

This one minute halo effect explanation will help, in my opinion. As the name suggests, the halo effect refers to our tendency to assume that attractive people are also happier, more successful and so on. As such, we project a bunch of positive traits that they might not actually have onto them.

However, as with many other things related to human nature, this can backfire, with the reverse halo effect and horn effect being manifestations of that. Simply put, our own feelings of inadequacy such as jealousy sometimes manifest themselves when seeing attractive people and, as such, we sometimes assume they’re untrustworthy, superficial and what not… it’s not that they actually are, it’s that we don’t like them because they make our insecurities surface :)

Finally, the horn effect revolves around us judging the book by its less than stellar cover. For example, knowing that someone is a convicted criminal and not being willing to give that person a second change… we label him/her an ex-con and it will be pretty much impossible for them to escape this verdict.