The Halo Effect

The halo effect can be explained as a type of cognitive bias we create from the overall impression of a person, it influences how we think or feel about the person’s character. The overall impression of a person impacts the evaluation and thoughts you have about a specific person’s traits. For example a celebrity is likable, good looking and successful. So you might also see them as funny, smart and nice.

This was discovered in a study performed by Thorndike. He asked two commanding officers to evaluate their soldiers in terms of their physical qualities (neatness, voice, physique, bearing, and energy), intellect, leadership skills and personal qualities (dependability, loyalty, responsibility, selflessness, cooperation. The goal of the study was to see how the ratings of one characteristic affected other characteristics.

 The study showed that there was too great correlation in the commanding officers responses. The rating of one of the qualities of a soldier often set a trend for the rest of the rating. If a soldier had a specific negative attribute it would correlate with the rest of the soldiers result.  

Aggression in TV Shows and Their Relation to Violence in Young Adults

Conducted by: Psychologists L Rowell Huesmann and Jessica Moise-Titus, Cheryl Lynn Podolski, Leonard D. Eron

Aim of the study: To show if Children's viewing of violent TV shows, their identification with aggressive same-sex TV characters, and their perceptions that TV violence is realistic are all linked to later aggression as young adults, for both males and females.

Participants:  557 people. At the start of the experiment they were 6-10 years old. In the second part of the experiment participants were around 20

Results: The participants, who watched High violent TV-shows and connected with the characters from the TV-show, had a higher number of instances where aggression was showed, such as; committing crimes or using physical violence later on.

Conclusion: Children that were exposed to High Violence TV-shows were more likely to show aggressive behavior as an adult than the ones exposed to non-violent TV-shows

Punishment and why it doesn't work

There are two types of punishment, negative and positive punishment. Negative punishment is when a stimulus is removed, something is taken away. For example, when a child is misbehaving the parents try to get rid of the bad behavior by taking away something that matters for the child, like taking away their computer, phone, TV, toys or freedom. They do this in the hope that their child will start behaving. Positive punishment is the addition or presence of a stimulus. For example, when a child is misbehaving the parents tries to get rid of the bad behavior by giving the child something instead of the removal of something. This could be spanking the child when misbehaving.

Punishment has shown that it does not work to change behavioral patterns. If a child does something bad and the parents punish them by spanking, the only thing that comes out of it is that the child learns to not show that kind of behavior in the presence of the parents. As soon as the child thinks they’re not being watched by their parents, the behavior resets and they start doing it again. The same goes for negative punishment, the child will continue the behavior as soon as they think they’re not being watched they continue the “bad” behavior.

If someone is exposed to punishment over longer time, they will get used to it, acclimated and they will stop responding to it. Punishment does not work over time, but it can seem to be a temporarily fix to a problem.