Today's example: tell an oenophile they're drinking vintage pinot noir, and they'll savor it. Tell them they're guzzling $6 merlot, and they'll spit it out. Don't argue; it's science.
A $90 wine was provided marked with its real price and again marked $10, while another was presented at its real price of $5 and also marked $45.Does a "halo effect" exist in education? Almost certainly. In its negative form, we call it "labeling." Positively, it's a Jedi mind trick: this is fun, students, because I say it's fun, and believe it's fun, and you're going to have fun. Fun fun fun.
The testers' brains showed more pleasure at the higher price than the lower one, even for the same wine, Rangel reports in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In other words, changes in the price of the wine changed the actual pleasure experienced by the drinkers, the researchers reported.
On the other hand, when tasters didn't know any price comparisons, they rated the $5 wine as better than any of the others sampled.
I firmly believe in the halo effect, which is why I wear ties twice a week. Gotta keep the halo polished.
2 comments:
Isn't this also known as the Chivas Regal effect? And doesn't it help explain the obsession with (expensive) "name" colleges?
Yes indeedy. And it makes suspect any theory based purely on a mathematical or "purely rational" decision-making apparatus.
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