Halo Effect

There's an article at Advertising Age about psychology and marketing. It mentions the halo effect. Here's the definition:

Halo effect: The tendency to be biased in the estimation or rating of an individual with respect to a certain characteristic by some quite irrelevant impression or estimate (good or bad) of the same individual. It is a frequent source of error in employing rating scale and other procedures.
- from The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology

What is great about the study of psychology is all the intellectual labels that can be applied to our every day instincts.

When you're not quite sure:

Ambiguous: Capable of two interpretations

Ambivalence: Emotional attitude towards an individual involving the alternation of the opposite feeling attitudes of love and hate.

There are no right on wrong answers when it comes to judging people, we're all just too complex, but we develop certain attitudes to make judging easier.

When I first moved to England it puzzled me how long it took to make good friends. Months and months, half a year, years! That's probably because no one could figure me out - just a nerd from the midwest who'd go back to the States shortly. I'm still here and the euphoria I feel when I spend time with some of the friends I've known for lo these twenty years is incredible. So yes, 'Blink' all you want to, but don't beat yourself up about taking time to make a judgement, even Malcolm Gladwell talks about the dangers of snap judgements that don't ever get below the surface (p76).