While judging a personality pageant, raters gave high scores to contestants who were already famous because of their presence in popular T.V. serials or advertisements and tended to give low scores to those who were not so popular. This phenomenon is called
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Halo effect
Option (1) Halo effect — Correct. Raters are often greatly influenced by a single favourable or unfavourable trait, which then forms the basis of their whole judgement of a person; this tendency is known as the halo effect. The raters let one favourable fact, the contestants’ fame from T.V. serials and advertisements, decide their whole score.
Option (2) Recency effect — Incorrect. In forming an impression, when a person pays attention to all the information, the information that comes at the end may have a stronger influence; this is the recency effect. Nothing in the pageant depends on which information came last.
Option (3) Primacy effect — Incorrect. Mostly, the information presented first has a stronger effect on an impression than the information presented at the end (‘first impressions are the lasting impressions’); this is the primacy effect. The raters are swayed by one trait, fame, not by the order of what they saw.
Option (4) Rosenthal effect — Incorrect. The Rosenthal effect (also called the Pygmalion effect) is the finding that high expectations of a person lead to better performance by that person: pupils whom teachers expect to do well tend to do better. It is about the effect of expectations on someone’s performance, not about how raters judge.
Note 1: The concepts in Options (2) and (3), ‘recency effect’ and ‘primacy effect’, are not explained in the 2023-24 NCERT, which NTA followed in 2024 (it only lists them among its key terms), and are not in NCERT (2025-26); they were explained in the pre-rationalised NCERT and are explained here for the benefit of the students.
Note 2: The concept in Option (4), ‘Rosenthal effect’, is not in the 2023-24 NCERT, which NTA followed in 2024, or in NCERT (2025-26); explained here for the benefit of the students.
NCERT (2025-26): “Behavioural Ratings … The method of rating suffers from the following major limitations: (1) Raters often display certain biases that colour their judgments of different traits. For example, most of us are greatly influenced by a single favourable or unfavourable trait. This often forms the basis of a rater’s overall judgment of a person. This tendency is known as the halo effect. (2) Raters have a tendency to place individuals either in the middle of the scale (called middle category bias) by avoiding extreme positions, or in the extreme positions (called extreme response bias) by avoiding middle categories on the scale.…” |