The other well-known problem is what’s called the “halo effect.” This is when one characteristic of something influences how people perceive other, unrelated characteristics. This was first empirically studied in 1920 by Edward Lee Thorndike. In his classic paper “A Constant Error in Psychological Ratings,” Thorndike asked military officers to rank their soldiers by various qualities—physical, intellectual, leadership, personality, and so on. He then looked at how one set of qualities affected the rating of another. He found that they correlated too closely. If someone’s physique was rated
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