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Home Teams and Halos

Home teams, halo effects, politics, partisan cues, decision-making: how voters switch off their brains to elites' signals.

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— 11 min read
Home Teams and Halos
Oleg Blokhin and USSR vs NZ, 1982 WC in Spain

The What of Halos

The vast majority of the political discourse—and, indeed, voting—can be reduced to the desire to belong to a group and rooting for the "home team" to win. Nowhere are rational considerations or analysing the policies on their own merits. Instead, the bundled sets of beliefs—often internally inconsistent and completely unconnected—are adopted and supported or resisted wholesale, just to belong to a group. Most of the time we do this subconsciously.

The culture war positions are an example of how easy it is to reduce complex situations to simple narratives, for these to be intertwined with politics, economics, and geopolitics, and then for people to fall for these simple narratives.

One such simple narrative is this:

  1. EU is "good": progressive, democratic, liberal, and supports LGBTQA+, NATO is its defensive alliance, and NATO supports Ukraine
  2. Russian Federation (RF) is "bad": authoritarian and illiberal (anti-LGBTQA+), RF attacked Ukraine
  3. Therefore, Ukraine is good, and we must support Ukraine in its fight against RF

It is not even clear if the EU is good because it stands for all those things, or it stands for all those things because it is good—almost always these premises are circular argument without clear causality. Same with RF: why is it bad? Because it attacked Ukraine. Why is attacking Ukraine unjustified? Because RF did it and anything RF does is bad, because RF is bad.

Or, consider the above narrative's mirror image:

  1. NATO is an aggressive alliance that bombed Yugoslavia and Libya and is now supporting the neo-Nazis in Ukraine
  2. EU is the key funder of NATO and Ukraine, EU supports LGBTQA+, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and other such initiatives
  3. Therefore, LGBTQA+ and DEI are bad, and we must resist both

Both these views are clearly naïve (as well as internally invalid as the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises, and even the premises themselves are not very sensible) but many people do choose to hold and defend these simplified and logically-inconsistent views, to feel themselves parts of this or that in-group.

This is driven primarily by the Halo Effect—which we covered in our first Season of Business Games–applied to groups. Sometimes this is called the "home team" effect, whereby if we like some group, we adopt wholesale uncritically as good all of their opinions, however inconsistent. That group with all their opinions is said to have a sort of halo around them. This even extends to the game itself, whatever the game is: fans of winners like the game after the wins, fans of losers get disenchanted after losses; for example in an election, the supporters of a losing candidate get disenchanted in the whole election process, which we can observe in the U.S. via accusations of "stolen elections", in particular after presidential elections.

The negative version of this effect works, too, and the key example is the typical liberal view of Putin or your basic racist phobias like Russophobia, Sinophobia, Islamophobia or indeed antisemitism.

Here's Diana Panchenko—a Ukrainian award-winning and currently exiled journalist under Zelensky's sanctions—exhibiting the negative version of the Halo Effect, in this case, the anti-EU/anti-progressive one:

This view incorporates the other side of the Halo: pro-EU is DEI, anti-EU is anti-DEI. Diana is highlighting a supposed silliness of the DEI by bringing in what feels like a rather racist trope that war is a white man's burden.

I follow Diana a lot and I had not experienced her to be racist; I find her to be a very good journalist, insofar as one can be a good journalist in modern times; her investigations and interviews seem to be fairly objective. I chalk this post of hers up to the desire to fit into a group by adopting all of their views wholesale, even the ones she doesn't share—although in such cases people do actually end up believing the views they adopt.

I suspect, in her case, it was the sequence:

  1. I see NATO and EU as the main culprit behind the Ukraine conflict
  2. The only countries inside the EU who are against this conflict exhibit nationalist tendencies (e.g., Orban/Hungary) while EU is characterized by a "liberal" agenda
  3. Therefore, we should attack liberalism in all its representations, while talking up nationalism (bordering on fascism) and conservatism

As a quick aside, just focusing on the internal logic of the EU propaganda that Diana is making fun of and without making a normative statement of good/bad, there is no internal inconsistency in the supposed EU "position": if you presented white men as Nazis before, but now you are putting them on the military posters, you can still call them "Nazis"—you are just pointing to the fact that they are now "our, useful, Nazis". This is not inconsistent. In logic terms, this EU propaganda position is "sound" ("If white men are Nazis and Nazis are only good for wars, therefore white men are only good for wars"—where's the inconsistency?). That is, if I wanted to make this point purely on internal logic of Diana's statement.

Here is another example:

This person finds an old Soviet poster promoting an International Festival of Peace and Friendship that is showing (checks picture) peace and friendship amongst the international community—and somehow claims that this is the same as modern Western liberal DEI? His thinking is probably as follows:

  1. Old Soviet poster had diverse people smiling
  2. Modern liberal elites promote diversity and have posters showing diverse people smiling
  3. Therefore, modern liberal elites must be "communist"/"Soviet" and therefore bad (the fact that anything Soviet is bad is a third, hidden, premise and usually goes without saying within various circles)

Even at a basic, logical level, these propositions are stupid. Technically, we call them "invalid" as the conclusions do not follow from the premises, even if premises were true. Modern liberal elites promoting diversity could be done for completely different reasons than the socialist promotion of friendship between nations—but even if it weren't, even if the reasons were the same (they aren't, but even if they were), just the promotion of diversity alone doesn't make one communist or liberal; the conclusion does not follow from the premise. Same with DEI and EU: EU might be imperialist, but it does not follow that everything it does is wrong (or right, for the other group).

The Why of Halo Susceptibility

But why are people susceptible to Halo Effects, in the first place?

The answer is hidden in the cognitive biases research, and it basically comes down to several related issues.

First, people substitute visible or easily verifiable characteristics (physical attractiveness, party affiliation) for invisible ones (decency, competence). If we don't know how competent someone is, but they support the same party we do, we tend to want to do business with them over someone else. We also believe that good-looking candidates are more competent; or that taller managers will likely make better CEOs (which is why the CEOs tend to be taller than the typical population, on average).

Curiously enough, this can also work in reverse: people tend to find the candidates from "their" party to be physically more attractive, even if physical attractiveness is supposed to be visible.

Second, things like empathy and group affiliation make one support one's "team" no matter the team's policies or actions. In such cases, it is emotionally costly to oppose some beliefs of the group while rooting for the group as a whole.

Third, when there are too many issues, people use bundling to decrease cognitive load. It might be difficult to understand all sides of all issues, but I like party A, agree with their policy on X and therefore will adopt their views on Y and Z, also, without necessarily understanding the full context of Y or Z. This last one is why so many liberals in the U.S. and Europe uncritically support arming Ukraine, even though most people (esp. in the U.S.) wouldn't be able to locate Ukraine on a map or explain the historical context of the current conflict.

If you want more on the Halo Effect in politics and to understand the above issues, you can start with these: popular press articles like How Political Polarization Breeds Ignorance in Pacific Standard, or academic literature like The Effects of Physical Attractiveness on Political Beliefs by Peterson and Palmer.

The How of Halos

So far, we looked at why people tend to support the "home team" in politics (whatever the home team is) via wholesale adoption of a bundle of beliefs that often have nothing to do with each other and can also be internally inconsistent. We also saw the examples of what that could look like and explanation of why such behaviour is persistent amongst people.

Partisan Cues in Theory

But how and why would such partisan attitudes be amplified in the public discourse?

The Why? is very easy: to get people to do something against their interests. That's the purpose of the PR, marketing, "spin doctors", propaganda industries—call it whatever you want, the purpose is always the same and it does occur regularly. You can listen to my interview with Prof. Oliver Boyd-Barrett to get more details on the history and examples of propaganda.

How is this done? Just as with any marketing activity impact, this comes down to reach and frequency of messaging. With Oliver, we get into details about the usage of media in propaganda: the episode's name "Propaganda at Its Most Innocent" derives from the fact that the most basic journalistic practice of the likes of Reuters is, for example, the choice of whom to quote on a controversial matter; by amplifying one voice and muting the other, the media can "report" on issues without lying while at the same time strongly shaping the narrative.

But in addition to the above, it also matters who sends the message. In academic research, there's a whole field of literature on "partisan cues".

The political situation in the U.S. today is more polarized than ever; it also happens in other countries in the West. See The Culture War and Partisan Polarization: State Political Parties, 1960-2018 by Gamm, Phillips, Carr and Auslen or Divided we stand: The rise of political animosity for the description of trends.

In such situations of increased polarization, Druckman et al in How Elite Partisan Polarization Affects Public Opinion Formation showed "with two experiments on immigration and energy" that:

[…] elite polarization dramatically changes the ways citizens form opinions. This change occurs because polarization stimulates partisan motivated reasoning, which in turn generates decision-making that relies more on partisan endorsements and less on substantive arguments.

Basically, increased polarization leads to party endorsements to become the dominant signal that the voters use to form their opinions on policies, above and beyond the direct merits of the policy in question. Not only this, but the voters also feel more confident in their opinions under partisan motivated reasoning.

In 2025, in their paper Uncertain Signals: Partisan Cues, Attitudes, and Trade Policy Preferences, Ruofan Ma and Ethan Miles of Harvard University showed the strength of partisan cues on the voters' attitudes to trade policy issues. They also write that this is a relatively new phenomenon, especially post-2016.

The consensus of this academic literature seems to be that the elite polarization increased especially starting with the 1990s, but only on the questions of identity (not economics); and that this elite polarization influences preference formation of the public via "partisan cues". Basically, the elites told the voters what to think, and it worked.

Partisan Cues in Action: the MAGA Split

The most striking example of partisan cues is happening right now, in 2025-26, and specifically in the MAGA movement split. It is incredible to see how the whole MAGA movement voted in Trump on the promise of free speech, no new wars, and with the usual support of the Second Amendment gun rights and America-First rhetoric—only to discover that Trump's Government is clamping down on free speech (criticism of Israel esp. via TikTok), starting new wars (e.g. Iran, Venezuela, etc.), murders people for carrying guns (e.g. ICE shootings in Minneapolis, especially of Alex Pretti—it's not even the shooting itself I'm highlighting here as the U.S. police shoots over a thousand people every year, but the enthusiastic rejection of the Second Amendment and the laws on the police discharge of weapons by large swathes of MAGA, highlighted by the below statement of Kash Patel and the "don't bring a gun to a protest" posts), and seems to put Israel first (I have a separate view on this which is more nuanced than this).

And while MAGA is splitting along these lines, what is truly striking is to see a lot of MAGA completely switching positions on these topics just because of the "partisan cues" from their leadership. And if these examples are not dramatic enough for you, the switch of MAGA on the Epstein Files definitely is: from "protect the kids!" to "is paedophilia really that bad?" (I'm exaggerating here, but the attempted excuses approach this directionally, like Megyn Kelly's "Epstein wasn't a paedophile as he was into 15-year-old girls, not 5-year-olds"—though already outdated as the newest batch of the Epstein Files shows trafficking of 10-year-old and 11-year-old girls, not just 15-year-old) and "this is the Democrats' hoax". I've never seen any issue where seemingly thinking people would basically do a U-turn on their supposedly deeply held beliefs.

Kash Patel and Megyn Kelly in the above examples are exactly the leaders providing the partisan cues on what to think—except in these cases, they alienate as many MAGA voters as they reinforce the cued beliefs.

Post-Scriptum

While I was writing this article, the Epstein story continued rapid development, replete with partisan cues and new spin angles, bringing us full circle to Russophobia (yay! Putin bad!), "Epstein is Chinese agent", and "Epstein is Hamas!" after briefly trying "Epstein is boring, nothing to see here".

This scrambling to find messaging that sticks, via large influencer channels, is quite something.

In the near future, we shall look into various groups (like MAGA) and the bundles of beliefs they seem to be holding. This will be the application of the concepts discussed here (partisan cues, motivated reasoning, halos, and home teams) to show the internal inconsistencies and misguidedness of these belief bundles.

For now, I'll leave you with this:

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