The Halo Effect - is there a negative equivalent?

Question

Debate with a colleague on this one - we were talking about the Halo Effect, whereby a positive perception of one thing influences people's perceptions about a wider range of attributes.
But is there a term for the negative equivalent, where one bad thing makes people generally perceive negative things about the wider picture e.g. someone is perceived at being bad at their job overall because they are bad at one aspect of it, even though they might ACTUALLY be pretty good at the other tasks

Answer 1

it is actually the same thing i.e. the same term
the halo effect refers to when one attribute affects perception of all other attributes . Can be positive or negative.

Answer 2

The Halo effect is symmetrical. It encompasses whatever was placed in to begin with. Think about it this way. If you give someone a dollar and they get a room to sleep. They show and shave. Get a job. That job gives them more money they give to others. They get jobs. All the work they do gets more money into SSI. You get to draw on more SSI money because of your dollar years before.
Now the bad.
You steal a dollar from someone. They go and hit someone they think took it. That person abuses the person they are with because they need to blow off steam. The abused steals alcohol to forget about their situation. The owner of the store gets a gun because he's tired of people stealing from him. You go into that store to rob the own and he shoots you.

Answer 3

It is still called the Halo Effect.


And yes, this is an awful trap for managers.

Answer 4

i came across the term 'devil effect' in some psych notes last semester which described exactly what you've written. personally i think they should have called it 'the pitchfork effect'.