Factoids

The opposite off the halo effect can also take place. One bad quality or experience can cloud your view of a person’s better qualities. This is known as the 'devil' or 'horn' effect.

CVs with pictures of attractive applicants attached have been shown to be more likely to result in a job offer, while juries have been shown to preferentially judge attractive defendants as not guilty. The only exception to this is when the defendant is accused of being a ‘con artist’. At this point, being attractive makes you more likely to be found guilty.

Elliot Aronson, a social psychologist at Stanford University, believes self-fulfilling prophecies - in which a person's confident self-perception, fed by healthy feedback from others - may play a role in success. Aronson suggests, based on the self-fulfilling prophecy, that people who feel they are attractive - though not necessarily rated as such - are just as successful as their counterparts who are judged to be good-looking.

References:

London Evening Standard: Ugly defendants"more likely to be found guilty than attractive ones".

Journal of Young Investigators: Looking good: The psychology and biology of beauty.

Aronson, Elliot. 1999. The Social Animal. New York: Worth Publishers, Inc

Psychology Today: The Halo Effect in overdrive.