You might think attractive people get preferential treatment in life – and research suggests you’d be right. Some psychologists have shown this can even help people get a lighter prison sentence. More recently, however, our own study suggests that this “halo effect” is, in fact, more complicated. The halo effect is a psychological term describing how an initial good impression of someone positively colours our subsequent perceptions of them. Our first impressions are formed quickly when we meet new people and they bias how we behave towards them. When we judge a person to be attractive, this c…