A warning about the use of a standard deviation across dimensions within ratees to measure halo.

Monte Carlo data show that the unstandardized standard deviation measure of the halo effect is affected by both the intercorrelation among rating dimensions and differences among the means of the rating dimensions as used by individual raters. The relationships between 4 different halo measures are analyzed, and the results of 2 studies using the unstandardized measure are examined to determine the degree to which the problem seems to have affected published data on the halo effect. It is recommended that each rater's average observed intercorrelation among the dimensions be used as a halo measure. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)