Attractiveness Halo

The attractiveness halo is a specific, well-studied application of the more general halo effect in which physically attractive people are automatically assumed, on the basis of their looks alone, to also possess a range of positive personality traits and better life prospects, including being more sociable, friendly, warm, intelligent, competent, and generally successful than less attractive people, even in the complete absence of any actual information about their personality or accomplishments. The psychologists Karen Dion, Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Walster documented the effect in a landmark 1972 study that became known for coining the phrase what is beautiful is good, in which participants shown photographs of people rated as attractive, average, or unattractive judged the more attractive individuals as more socially desirable and predicted they would have better job prospects, more successful marriages, and greater overall happiness, based entirely on their appearance in the photograph. Whereas the general halo effect describes any single salient positive trait coloring perception of a person's other, unrelated traits, the attractiveness halo names the specific and unusually consistent case built around physical attractiveness as the initial salient trait, and it has been replicated across many later studies examining hiring decisions, criminal sentencing, academic grading, and other consequential judgments, with more recent research further examining whether the same halo persists, and to what degree, when a person's appearance has itself been digitally enhanced by beauty filters.