Thorndike’s a Constant Error in Psychological Ratings

INTRODUCTION

The halo effect is a cognitive bias in which an observer's overall impression of a person, company, brand, or product influences the observer's feelings and thoughts about that entity's character or properties. It was named by psychologist Edward Thorndike in reference to a person being perceived as having a halo (Wikipedia 2016). It is called Halo because this comes from the paintings of medieval and renaissance period that every good and trustworthy character in the painting has glowing circle above their head. It was first introduced by Edward Thorndike in the year 1920. People base the personalities of an individual from their first impression for him, for example, the Hollywood actress; people assume that they are intelligent and kind because their appearance on television and the way they move looks like it. And also the politicians, most of the people vote for the person who has the looks of being decent because they believe that, that politician is honest and trustworthy.

Thorndike’s work “A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings” states that when people observe other’s only one particular trait, it will drag down the other traits of an individual. Halo effect can occur everywhere since it is based on social psychology, one person can observe another. Frequently, people misconceive the personality of an individual because of a particular trait, for example, the way they communicate with people, either polite or rude. Some people get deceived by a good-looking person and assume that this individual possesses a pleasant personality, but the opposite happens the moment they communicate with others.

Communication, physical appearances and gestures are the observable features of an individual. Therefore, what trait can make them change their overall impression of a person? What might become dominant for the respondents; the physical appearance, in the way the person communicates, or if both combines? Researchers conduct this experiment to prove that most of the people’s impressions are based on a person’s physical appearance and attitude around people.

This research wants to show if halo effect occurs and influence the respondents, in the way they perceive others voice, appearance, and its combination. Researchers want to know the reaction of the respondents to the person’s voice, if that can make them a bad person or a nice person for the observer; an image of a person; and lastly the combination of voice and physical appearance of an individual.

Statement of the problem

This study, in general, attempts to determine the perception of personality type through voice and physical appearance by first year psychology students 2015-2016.

Specifically, it aims to delve into the following questions:

1.    How do the male and female first year psychology students rate the personality of the speaker through their voice?

2.    How do the male and female first year psychology students rate the personality of the speaker through their physical appearance?

3.    How do the male and female first year psychology students rate the personality of the speaker through the combination of voice and physical appearance?

4.    What is the significant difference of personality ratings of speaker’s voice, appearance and both voice and physical appearance?

Scope and Limitation

This experiment will be conducted to determine the perception of personality type through voice and physical appearance by male and female first year psychology students in Cavite State University Main Campus. The main source of data will be the personality test that will be prepared by the researchers.

Although the experiment will reach its aim, there will still be unavoidable limitations. First, because of the small population of male first year psychology students in Cavite State University Main Campus, the researchers couldn’t control the gender variable. Second is the research design itself. The experimental design that will be used is within-group posttest only design. Even if the posttest only design does find many uses, it is limited in scope and contains many threats to validity. It is very poor at guarding against assignment bias, because the researcher knows nothing about the individual differences within the control group and how they may have affected the outcome.  

Hypothesis

There is no significant difference between the ratings of the personality type of individuals using voice, appearance and the combination of voice and appearance.

Theoretical /Conceptual Framework

The Halo Effect is a well-documented social-psychology phenomenon that causes people to be biased in their judgments by transferring their feelings about one attribute of something to other, unrelated, attributes.

The term "halo" is used in analogy with the religious concept: a glowing circle that can be seen floating above the heads of saints in countless medieval and Renaissance paintings. The saint's face seems bathed in heavenly light from his or her halo. Thus, by seeing that somebody was painted with a halo, you can tell that this must have been a good and worthy person. In other words, you're transferring your judgment from one easily observed characteristic of the person (painted with a halo) to a judgment of that person's character.

The major concept of this study is to determine the perception of personality type to voice and physical appearance through personality assessment by male and female first year psychology students.

Figure 1 shows the paradigm of the study. It consists of 4 boxes namely; first is the speaker’s voice, the second box is the physical appearance of the speaker and the third box is the combination of voice and physical appearance of the speaker. The last box which is the ratings of personality assess by male and female first year psychology students is the dependent variable.

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Definition of Terms

        For a better understanding of this study, the following terms are conceptually and operationally defined.

Big Five personality traits - also known as the five factor model (FFM), is a widely examined theory of five broad dimensions used by some psychologists to describe the human personality and psyche. The five factors have been defined as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Acronyms to aid in remembering the five traits include OCEAN and CANOE. Beneath each proposed global factor, a number of correlated and more specific primary factors are claimed. For example, extraversion is said to include such related qualities as gregariousness, assertiveness, excitement seeking, warmth, activity, and positive emotions

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