IB Psychology Higher Level

Internal Assessment

“An investigation into the prevalence of Halo effect into the

ratings of students about their teacher based on the
teacher’s mannerisms, gestures, accent”

Candidate code: jxc667

Group Member’s Candidate Code: jxc710, jwk835, jwk814

Session: May 2022

Word Count: 2,179

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Table of Contents

Introduction……………………………………………………….1

Exploration………………………………………………………..6

Analysis…………………………………………………………....8

Evaluation………………………………………………………..10

Bibliography……………………………………………………..13

Appendices……………………………………………14
Appendix 1: Informed Consent………………………………………………

Appendix 2: Briefing & Debriefing Instructions…………………………….

Appendix 3: Video Taped Interview of Good Teacher & Bad Teacher……..

Appendix 4: Link to the Questionnaire………………………………………

Appendix 5: Raw Data Tables……………………………………………….

Appendix 6: Mann Whitney U-Test………………………

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Introduction:
According to cognitive approach, heuristics influence our decision making and thought

processing. Heuristics are the judgemental shortcuts which people rely upon in order to increase

efficiency and make quick decisions. 1 Since humans are cognitive misers, they use heuristics to

make quick decisions and reduce cognitive load. Nonetheless, sometimes heuristics might result

in inaccuracy in thinking and decision making known as cognitive bias. One type of Cognitive

Bias is the ‘Halo Effect’. The Halo effect is “the name given to the phenomenon whereby

evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality.”2

“Halo effect theory” was propounded by Edward L. Thorndike (1920)3, based on his

observations of military officers “ranking” their subordinates. He made the superiors rank the

subordinates before communicating with them based on character traits including leadership

ability, physique, intelligence, character.4 The findings were that formation of physical

impressions was based on the positive and negative ratings given by the subordinates. Hence,

this theory of Halo effect confirmed that we form overall impressions about others based on their

independent traits.

1
Tversky, Amos; Kahneman, Daniel (1974). "Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases". Science. 185
(4157): 1124–1131. doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124

2
Clark, L., Butler, K., Ritchie, K. L., & Maréchal, L. (2020). The importance of first impression judgments in
interspecies interactions. Scientific reports, 10 (1), 2218. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-58867-x

3
Thorndike, E.L. (1920). A constant error in psychological ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 4(1), 25–29.
doi:10.1037/h0071663

4
Cherry, K. (2020). Why the Halo Effect Influences How We Perceive Others. Retrieved 22 April 2021, from
<https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-halo-effect-2795906>

1
Nisbett and Wilson (1977)’s 5study aimed to investigate whether the Halo effect takes place in

people Psych. Nisbett and Wilson stated that a person's appearance, mannerism and accent can

form a judgment in people's mind about the person. The researchers of the research study wanted

to experiment with the students' judgment about their teachers in a high school. For this research

study, 118 students consisting of 62 males and 56 females from the University of Michigan were

chosen. The researchers divided the students into two groups, one group was shown the

interview of the teacher who was friendly and warm, understood the students and helped them

with their queries, whereas the other group was shown the interview of the teacher who was

unfriendly, unaffectionate and had a limited approach in helping his students. Then the students

were asked the questionnaire based on the traits of the teachers like mannerism, accent and

gestures. The results of this study were as expected, the students judged the physical appearance

and mannerisms of the lecturer regardless of his sweet and friendly behavior 6, this provides us

with the fact that the Halo effect is evident.

The investigation is a replication of the research study of Halo Effect by Nisbett and Wilson

(1977), which aims to study the perceptions of high school students about their teacher based on

the teacher’s mannerisms, gestures, accent etc. The application of this study is relevant in real

life situations as it encourages teachers-students relationships to be friendlier and warmer, which

would gradually make progress in their education settings.

5
Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). The halo effect: Evidence for unconscious alteration of judgments. Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(4), 250–256. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.35.4.250
6
Ibid

2
Null Hypothesis: In the distributions of the ratings given by the 30 high school students after

seeing the two interviews, there will not be a notable difference which means that the

independent variable and the dependent variable will not be related to each other.

Research Hypothesis: The 30 high school students will be shown two interviews, one in which

the teacher is friendly and warm and another in which the teacher is unfriendly and cold. Later,

the 30 students or participants will be asked a questionnaire on the basis of the character traits

such as accent, gestures, mannerisms etc. of the teachers. The questionnaire will be assessed on

an 8 point Likert scale of 1-8, where 1 shows the least and 8 shows the most attractive. 7 The high

school students will give comparatively higher ratings to the interviews of the warm and friendly

teacher than the interview of the teacher who is unaffectionate and cold.

Independent Variable: The interviews shown to the high school students will be the

independent variable because on the basis of those interviews, the students will be able to give

their views. Dependent Variable: The ratings given by the high school students will be the

dependent variable because the ratings of the students will be dependent on the interviews shown

to them.

7
Ho, S. (2021). Table 4 8-point Likert-type scale response. Retrieved 19 April 2021, from
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/point-Likert-type-scale-response_tbl2_34485429. Accessed 26 December,
2021.

3
Exploration:

Research Design

In this research study, Independent Measures Design was used so participants were selected by

random allocation to one of the two groups. It helps in avoiding researcher biases and reduce

demand characteristics as the data or hypothesis of this experiment will be kept confidential. On

the other hand, the Repeated Measures Design allowed participants to guess the hypothesis

which increased the demand characteristics, as well as reduced the chances of the Halo effect

from occurring.

Sampling and Participants

24 IB first year English HL, Non- Psychology students were divided using Volunteer Sampling

Technique. We used this sampling technique because of its practical advantages, it saves time

and effort for the researchers and allows the participants who take part in the experiment on their

own record. The Participants were selected using Google forms randomly so that they could

register in the experiment on their own choices. Relying on the flip of a coin, the participants

were randomly divided into two groups, each with 12 participants, 5 males and 7 females. The

4
participants had a tendency to consider looks and mannerisms to make an assumption about

people.

Materials Required

We collected the two videos which are titled as ``IB Psych- The Halo Effect: “Good Teacher”
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and “IB Psych- The Halo Effect: “Bad Teacher”9 from the same Youtube Channel called Jake

Shepherd, just to make sure that both the videos belong from the same teacher. Also, we made

and used a Google doc containing the questionnaire from where the 4 questions about the

participant’s preference towards the teacher and teacher’s character traits are taken, made using

the real research study of Nisbett and Wilson. A pilot study was conducted by us where we

researchers registered a separate group of 10 high school students who have Math AA SL

subject. Our intention behind this pilot study was to investigate if the friendly teacher would

generally be rated better by others, we also used this opportunity to make changes in our

questionnaire so that it becomes easier of our main experiment units to comprehend the

questions.

Controlled Variables

8
Shepherd, J. (2017, October 11). IB Psych- The Halo Effect: “Good Teacher [Video]. YouTube.
Retrieved 1 September 2021, from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWfO7TAGwaQ>
9
Shepherd, J. (2017, October 11). IB Psych- The Halo Effect: “Bad Teacher [Video]. YouTube.
Retrieved 4 September 2021, from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_NUKVXwyiE>

5
We distributed the same questionnaire as well as the briefing and debriefing instructions to each

of the groups, so that it reduces the effect of the confounding variables. We did not consider the

students of Psychology class as they would raise the demand characteristics which would count

as a disadvantage of this experiment. Both the groups had the same population as well as they

belonged to the similar age-group, also the videos the two groups watched were of the same

quality, sound and duration between 0:00 to 2:31 for good teacher and 0:00 to 2:17 for the bad

teacher. Both the groups were allotted the same amount of time that is 4 minutes to fill their

questionnaires. They were given minimum time in order for them to avoid overthinking.

Procedure

The participants submitted their signed consent forms, after which we instructed them by

briefing them about the experiment. They were provided with the joining links to the meeting on

Zoom and there they were shown the two interviews of the teachers. After the two groups

concurrently watch the two videos, they were provided with the Google form links to the

questionnaire and were asked to answer the questions within the given time. Their answers were

on record and were collected. As the procedure was leading to its end, the participants were

debriefed about the experiment and also were asked if they wanted to withdraw their responses

from the Google doc.

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Analysis

The mean and standard deviation were determined in descriptive statistics after the Likert Scale

scores were converted into interval data. The average ranking for the experimental condition

(M=19.17) was greater than the control condition (M=12.50), with a difference of 6.67 points

between the two classes. A large standard deviation (=2.69 and =1.57, respectively) indicated a

considerable dispersion across the mean in both groups, with the experimental group displaying a

higher discrepancy in the scores.

Table 1: The Mean Value and Standard Deviation of the experiment and
control group ratings

Type of Group Mean Standard Deviation

Control group 12.50 1.57

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Experimental group 19.17 2.69

Graph-1 Mean Average Scores of the two groups

We employed the Mann-Whitney U-test for inferential analysis because we used the Independent

Measures Design and were collecting interval data. All data was converted to ordinal data for

this test by assigning different ranks to each item. The value of U (0.5) should be smaller than 42

and 31 at 0.01 and 0.05 significance levels, respectively, for this to be valid.

8
Evaluation

Our modified experiment's results support Edward Thorndike's concept of halo effect. Thorndike

discovered a link between seemingly opposing positive and negative characteristics, soldiers who

were found to be taller and more attractive were frequently assessed as smarter and stronger and

the opposite for the soldiers who did not seem very attractive. A similarity is witnessed in this

experiment, as the instructor with a nice, pleasant, and passionate attitude was evaluated higher

in our study, where the instructor with coldness and unfriendliness was evaluated lower.

Analyzing the calculation of this experiment with the study of Nisbett and Wilson, Nisbett and

Wilson’s experiment had a mean of 3.18 for the control group and 5.48 for the experimental

group. Not drawing much of a difference, our mean was 2.58 for the control group and 5.75 for

the experimental group. Both the experiments support the concept of Halo effect and result into

higher ratings for the attractive and affectionate character. As a result, a comparable link can be

found between the results of Nisbett and Wilson (1977).

As a weakness of this experiment, it could be asserted that the sample in our experiment would

not cover or be representative of the entire population, thus reducing its reliability. There could

9
be a modification that is to propagate the research to random allocating technique, this would

increase its representativeness as each participant from the target group would have an equal

opportunity to participate. This could be a positive factor as it reduces the researcher bias.

During the survey, the participants were given a very limited amount of time to fill the

questionnaire. This would lead them to feel anxious and distressed and thus there were chances

for them to submit incorrect responses. This adds two more demerits to this experiment, one is

that protection of participants could not be maintained and secondly, it reduced the validity of

this experiment.

One of the merits of this experiment is that we used the independent measures design as it

monitors demand characteristics and the order effect. If a repeated measures design had been

utilized, it would lead to order effect and participants guessing the aim of the experiment.

Because the participants were to be separated into one of two conditions- good teacher

(experimental) or terrible teacher (control), a design that sits somewhere in the middle of the two

alternatives, such as matched pair design, proved to be more suitable and fitting (control).

One advantage of adopting volunteer sampling was the ease with which we were able to quickly

recruit potential volunteers via an online Google form. Applying volunteer sampling techniques

made the procedure more convenient for us as it saved our time and effort, plus we could figure

that the participants were enthusiastic in participating in the experiment.

This experiment respected all the ethical considerations of a psychological experiment, this

would add up to its merits. The procedure of this experiment had a smooth process avoiding any

sort of confusion or conflicts. Beginning with collecting the consent forms from the participants

and briefing them about the experiment to recording their responses and debriefing them about

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the experiment, every step was carried out without any problems occurring. It was needed to

misinform the participants about the experiment so they were told that they were added in this

examination to check whether the teachers were worthy or getting hired or not, they were not

told about any real reasons to have unbiased responses from them. This leaded to deception in

our experiment.

Another benefit of our method was the pilot study we ran with ten mathematics major students

prior to the main experiment to see if the results for the two circumstances would be sufficient to

meet Nisbett and Wilson's 1977 hypothesis. As a result, it was difficult to tell whether the

subjects had lost interest during the trial. Because the survey was performed using a Likert Scale,

it's possible that the respondents were unable to communicate their true feelings. In addition,

because "none of the above" was not an option, participants were forced to choose a grade, even

if they did not like it. In future experiments, this option may be employed, and participants could

be given the opportunity to express their opinions so that researchers could study their results

qualitatively.

To conclude, the alternative hypothesis was accepted with the derived value of U= 0.5 at

significance levels 0.01 and 0.05 that high school students would offer the images in an attractive

state in a maximum mean ranking to the attractive images. Hence, disproving the null hypothesis

and supporting the presence on halo effect when ranking characteristics according to appearance.

11
Bibliography
● Tversky, Amos; Kahneman, Daniel (1974). "Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and

biases". Science. 185 (4157): 1124–1131. doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124

● Clark, L., Butler, K., Ritchie, K. L., & Maréchal, L. (2020). The importance of first

impression judgments in interspecies interactions. Scientific reports, 10(1),

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-58867-x

● Thorndike, E.L. (1920). A constant error in psychological ratings. Journal of Applied

Psychology, 4(1), 25–29. doi:10.1037/h0071663

● Cherry, K. (2020). Why the Halo Effect Influences How We Perceive Others. Retrieved

22 April 2021, from <https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-halo-effect-2795906>

● Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). The halo effect: Evidence for unconscious

alteration of judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(4), 250–256.

doi:10.1037/0022-3514.35.4.250

● Ho, Susanna. (2003). The effects of three-day adventure-based camping programmes on

the perceptions of primary five Singaporean pupils' life effectiveness.

12
 ● Shepherd, J. (2017, October 11). IB Psych- The Halo Effect: “Good Teacher [Video].

YouTube. Retrieved 1 September 2021, from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=wWfO7TAGwaQ>

● Shepherd, J. (2017, October 11). IB Psych- The Halo Effect: “Bad Teacher [Video].

YouTube. Retrieved 4 September 2021, from <https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=l_NUKVXwyiE>

Appendices

Appendix-1

Informed Consent

Consent Form-

You fully understand your role as a participant in this research project and its nature by

recognising the terms specified in this consent form. Before you sign this consent form, please

keep the following factors in mind:

I am aware that I am participating in psychological research;

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I am aware that all of the information I provide will stay confidential, and my identity will not be

linked to my data;

and I am aware that all of the information I offer will remain confidential.

I am aware that my participation in this study is voluntary, and that I may withdraw at any time

after the study begins; I am aware that I will not suffer any physical or mental harm as a result of

my participation; and I am aware that I will not suffer any physical or mental harm as a result of

my participation in this study. The experiment will need me to complete a questionnaire in a

secure and ethical school setting; I am aware that after the study is completed, I will be debriefed

about the research in which I participated.

I provide my full agreement to participate in this research project by agreeing to take part in it

and signing the consent form.

Name: _________________________________________________

Date: _________________________________________________

Age: _________________________________________________

Signature: _________________________________________________

Appendix-2
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Briefing & Debriefing Instructions

Briefing Instructions-

Hello,

I am grateful to all of you for participating in our experiment and helping us collect the data. In

this psychological experiment, the anonymity of our participants is assured during and after the

experiment. We will start our experiment the moment we are done with collecting your consent

forms. During the experiment, if you ever feel uncomfortable and disagree to continue, you are

allowed to withdraw immediately.

Debriefing Instructions-

Welcome Back,

We are thankful to all of you for taking part in this experiment again and in a disciplined

manner. High School Students of our school would cognitively respond to the Halo Effect. The

Halo effect is a psychological phenomenon that causes people to be biased in their opinions by

transferring their feelings about o ne attribute to something other. To be specific about the

experiment, the aim was to examine whether the This idea was first conducted and proven in

Dion Et Al 1972. Kindly, let us know if you have any query about this experiment otherwise you

may leave.

Appendix- 3

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Video-taped interview of the good teacher and the bad teacher

Interview of the good teacher- https://youtu.be/wWfO7TAGwaQ

Interview of the bad teacher- https://youtu.be/l_NUKVXwyiE

Appendix-4

Link to the questionnaire-

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ujKfzOfixrKCvkkVeshCgnBQaP9eJ9knB1lhVFauxls/edit

Appendix-5

Raw Data

Table 2- Response of the good teacher (experimental group)

Liking for the Physical

Participants teacher Appearance Mannerism Accent Total
1 5 3 5 2 15
2 6 2 5 4 17
3 4 5 4 3 16
4 5 7 5 4 21
5 4 5 6 4 19
6 5 4 6 7 22

16
 7 7 1 5 6 19
8 8 3 6 5 22
9 4 7 7 6 24
10 5 6 5 3 19
11 6 3 1 7 17
12 4 6 5 4 19
Total 69 71 66 73 230

Table 3- Response of the bad teacher (control group)

Liking for the Physical

Participants teacher Appearance Mannerism Accent Total
1 3 3 4 4 14
2 2 2 3 4 11
3 2 3 4 3 12
4 2 2 3 3 10
5 3 4 1 4 12
6 4 4 3 3 14
7 3 1 5 4 13
8 4 2 3 2 11
9 1 4 4 4 13
10 1 4 1 5 11
11 2 4 5 3 14
12 4 3 3 5 15
Total 31 36 39 44 150

Appendix-6

Table 4- Mann Whitney U test.

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Formula for Mann Whitney U test-

18
Table 5- Critical values for mann whitney U test

Table 6- Mean and standard deviation

19
Mean & Standard Deviation for the experimental Group-

23+24+20+26+25+21+24+23+27+20+21+18
Mean= _____________________________________ = 22.67
12

Table 7- Standard Deviation calculation for experimental group

20
Mean and Standard Deviation for Control Group

18+14+10+14+20+12+12+20+12+21+12+14
Mean = _____________________________________= 14.92
12

Table 8- Standard Deviation for the control group

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The aim of this experiment is to see if the teacher interviewed should be hired or not. We will

begin by randomly assigning you two separate meetings, after you have joined we will present

you with two videos followed by a questionnaire based on those videos. After we are done with

it, you will be provided with the debriefing instructions. Also, let us know if you have any doubt

or query regarding the aim or procedure.

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