Just to illustrate it once more, before I put this to rest, here are people whom, because of the halo effect, have all become unlikely sex symbols.

What they have in common, is that they all have one trait of character (different for each of them), developped to a high degree, which made them physically desirable to women.

Sure they are media personnalities, but their fame is incidental... Even if they were not famous, they would still appear physically attractive to women around them.

Personally, I'm dubious. Women are attracted to all sorts of things. I can't see how you become better looking just because you might be funny, or charismatic, or rich. Sure those things can make you an attractive catch if the girl is attracted to those things, but how do those things make you actually better looking?

My biggest argument against this would be if you were to take a couple who are massively loved up. They are ridiculously attracted to each other, yet neither of them are particularly good looking. Instead, they're attracted to each other because they've just got such a chemistry, the same sense of humour, and get along really really well.

So the average looking lad likes the average looking girl because of her wicked personality. One day, he sees an absolutely stunning underwear model. But he gets talking to her and she is stuck up, arrogant, no sense of humour or anything like that.

Now, the average lad might not be ATTRACTED to her, because he doesn't like the personality. But through the halo theory as I understand it, he'd genuinely think his average looking girl friend was BETTER LOOKING than the gorgeous underwear model?

Err.. no, I don't think so. Attraction and knowing someone is good looking are two different things.

Now I agree that unattractive or average people can be extremely attractive because of another trait. Ross Kemp has got that hardboy rugged thing going on which some girls find attractive. The long haired lad (Harry Styles is it?) has got the long haired "emo rock star" type thing which some women find attractive. Putin is the most powerful man in Russia, girls certainly are often attracted to power. I didn't particularly know Gordon Ramsay or Alan Titchmarsh were sex symbols, and I don't really know anything about them or what they're like so can't comment. Simon Cowell, again, very confident/arrogant, which girls are attracted to. Oh, and let's not forget that all of them are wealthy to go with it as well.

For me, those things can get over looks, definitely. They can make you more ATTRACTIVE, but you seem to be saying they actually make you better looking. I can't see that.

Copied from here: http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/10/halo-e ... ind-is.php

"Likeability of lecturers

Nisbett and Wilson wanted to examine the way student participants made judgements about a lecturer (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Students were told the research was investigating teacher evaluations. Specifically, they were told, the experimenters were interested in whether judgements varied depending on the amount of exposure students had to a particular lecturer. This was a total lie.

In fact the students had been divided into two groups who were going to watch two different videos of the same lecturer, who happened to have a strong Belgian accent (this is relevant!). One group watched the lecturer answer a series of questions in an extremely warm and friendly manner. The second group saw exactly the same person answer exactly the questions in a cold and distant manner. Experimenters made sure it was obvious which of the lecturers alter-egos was more likeable. In one he appeared to like teaching and students and in the other he came across as a much more authoritarian figure who didn't like teach at all.

After each group of students watched the videos they were asked to rate the lecturer on physical appearance, mannerisms and even his accent (mannerisms were kept the same across both videos). Consistent with the halo effect, students who saw the 'warm' incarnation of the lecturer rated him more attractive, his mannerisms more likeable and even is accent as more appealing. This was unsurprising as it backed up previous work on the halo effect."

This is only one study among many similar ones... Notice how in this study, attractiveness and physical appearance are used as synonyms... Basically, the students were asked to rate how good looking the lecturer was on a scale of one to ten.

This effect has been demonstrated time and time again... Ask a control group to rate the looks of a certain person, then show one desirable trait of this person, and ask another group to rate the looks of that person again: s/he will consistently be rated higher in the second case.

Oh, I forgot what was perhaps the best part of that last article:

"The surprise is that students had no clue whatsoever why they gave one lecturer higher ratings, even after they were given every chance. After the study it was suggested to them that how much they liked the lecturer might have affected their evaluations. Despite this, most said that how much they liked the lecturer from what he said had not affected their evaluation of his individual characteristics at all... They were convinced they had made their judgement about the lecturer's physical appearance, mannerisms and accent without considering how likeable he was."
then later:
"But what this experiment demonstrates is that although we can understand the halo effect intellectually, we often have no idea when it is actually happening."

Judging from people's reactions to what I have posted so far on here, it is clear that the halo effect largely goes undetected...
Heck, despite all the studies I have quoted, and the proofs provided, some of you still persist in denying it....

This is not a half-assed theory coming from some deluded PUA... this is a well-accepted psychological phenomenon which has been demonstrated time and time again in peer-reviewed studies... Now you can keep trying to deny there is such a thing as a halo effect, but all you are doing is confirming how underestimated it actually is.

As I wrote before, this is subtle yet powerful, and it goes largely undetected... in other words, if you can make it work for you, it's absolute gold!