Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Halo effect experiment by Solomon Asch

This experiment is a classic study in the psychology of interpersonal perception, these series of experiments were titled Forming Impressions of Personality by Solomon Asch, the principle of this research is that perceptions of a person are by the traits they posses, these perceptions are the most important factor that help our mind establish an impression on that person. The halo effect experiments conducted by Solomon Asch were many, he did various experiments but generally following the same outline, the only changing variable were the order of the words dictated to the series of participants, serie A and serie B, he used many words who were the same but they were put in the inverse order between serie a and b, in such as participants from serie A got the serie A description and serie B the B description, these descriptions were full of words who were the same in each set but put backwards, being the independent variable, then the experimentors procceded to ask the participants from series A and B for a sketch from the details provided, the sketch the participants drew is the dependent variable, since it is the one that is measured according to what the participant drew relating it to the words provided by the experimenter, the sketches showed what the experimentors were expecting to see, although the descriptions contained NO physical characteritics like "tall" only descrptions such as "intelligent", the participants responded with a positive sketch of the described person to the description with positive attributes at the beginning, and on the otherhand they responded with a negative sketch such as an ugly person to the description that contained bad attributes at the beginning, this showing how simple words that represent no physical description can make up an image about a person, and how the association of the human mind is so strong, vinculating people who are considered attractive with positive characteristics and vice versa, people not considered attractive with negative characteristics. The person described by the participants in serie A were always related to someone they knew, with a profession they had in their mind containing those characteristics, such as being "intelligent", related to a teacher, a scientist, etc. There were many parts to this experiment, alternating the words so the outcome was more precise, I would like to recreate the one where it gave the traits of "A. intelligent—skillful—industrious—determined— practical—cautious—evasive B. evasive—cautious—practical—determined—industrious—skillful—intelligent" 

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