Halo Error: An Assessment of Priming as a Reduction Technique

Abstract

The primary question explored in the present study was whether priming a rater on a specific attribute such as physical appearance reduces his tendency toward halo error. Subjects were 161 male and female undergraduate students, half of whom were primed on physical appearance by rating the desirability of various physical attributes. The remaining 80 subjects completed a filler exercise of similar length and format. After this, each subject read a vignette describing a college professor as either an over-all warm or cold person and viewed a videotape portraying this instructor as having either a flexible or rigid approach to teaching. It was hypothesized that unprimed subjects would exhibit greater halo in their ratings of the primed attribute than would primed subjects and primed subjects would display more accurate memory than unprimed subjects on an objective test of physical appearance. These hypotheses were supported by the data. Results were discussed in terms of their relevance for training raters.