Project Summary
When beginning to formulate my independent project, I decided to think about where my personal and academic interests align. I knew that I wanted to do something in the psychology or mental health category, but I thought that making it pop-culture related would be fun. I started to research different psychological experiments and effects and came across a Britannica article about the Halo Effect. I realized that the psychology of first impressions was more complex than I thought, and I decided to pursue a project that would answer the question of how physical appearance affects other characteristics we look for in a person, like intelligence and humor. I did not have any previous experience in this topic, so I decided to look into past examples of the Halo Effect experiment being applied in different settings. Along the way, I decided to focus my project on celebrities and how their public impression affects what we think of them. I formed a hypothesis that sounded counterintuitive: the more attractive we find the person, the more intelligent we’ll think they are, and the more we’ll want to be friends with them. In order to prove this hypothesis, I had to find a group of people willing to take a survey. My next challenge was getting people to both agree to take the survey and actually follow through with it. I was pleasantly surprised by how many of my classmates were willing to help, and I was able to send the final survey out to nearly thirty people. Upon reviewing the results, my hypothesis proved correct and I was thrilled to see that the experiment worked better than expected in a five-minute online survey setting. If I had more time to continue this project, I would like to continue the survey, as well as continually hone in on specific points. For example, I would be interested in giving the same survey to people but without photos. This would be a way to see if people who take the survey without a picture in front of them imagine the person to be more attractive when recalling them. Overall, I finished everything that I hoped for in the project and I’m really proud of the results.
