Yesterday I wrote about narrative fallacies and how our brains’ desires to create coherent stories can lead to cognitive errors. One error, which I wrote about previously, is the halo effect, and in some ways it is a direct consequence of narrative thinking. Our brains don’t do well with conflicting information that doesn’t fit a coherent narrative, and the halo effect helps smooth over this problem in our minds.
In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman writes, “The halo effect helps keep explanatory narratives simply and coherent by exaggerating the consistency of evaluations; good people do only good things and bad people are all bad.” When we already like someone or consider them a good person the halo effect will simplify other judgments that we might have to make about them. If the person we admire is wearing a particular kind of coat, then we will assume that it is also a coat we should admire. If a person we dislike is engaging in some type of business, then we will assume that business is also bad. Contradictions occur when we see someone we admire wearing clothing we don’t find acceptable or when a person we know to have moral flaws engages in altruistic charity work.
Instead of accepting a contradiction in our narrative, creating a more complex story where some people are good in some situations but bad in others, we alter our judgments in other ways to maintain a coherent narrative. The person we like wearing strange clothes is a trend setter, and that must be the new up-and-coming style we should try to emulate. The bad person engaged in charity isn’t really doing the good things for good reasons, rather they are being selfish and trying to show-off through their charity.
When we reflect on our thinking and try to be more considerate of the narratives we create, we can see that we fall into traps like the halo effect. What is harder to do, however, is overcome the halo effect and other cognitive errors that simplify our narratives once we have noticed them. It is hard to continually live with conflicting opinions, ideas of people, cities, sports teams, car companies, and shoe brands. It is much easier to adopt a few favorites and believe them to be a good in all ways, rather than to accept that something might be great in some ways, but harmful or disappointing in others.
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