Rationally Speaking #34 - Celebrities and the Damage They Can Do
Rationally Speaking Podcast
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The Halo Effect: How the Perception of a Person Is Influenced Unconsciously
There's this well-known cognitive bias called the halo effect in which the perception of one trait of a person or of a thing is influenced by your perception of a totally different trait of theirs. So shouldn't it be surprising that celebrities who are far more attractive and glamorous than your typical person get a big kickback when they're talking about something even completely unrelated to their career? Yeah, now that makes sense. That doesn't remind me of another effect that I often mention to my students in sort of critical thinking classes, which is, I refer to it as the Nobel syndrome. As soon as somebody wins the Nobel Prize, that person suddenly becomes an expert on almost anything. And yet
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