The perception of politicians’ morality: Attacks and defenses.

In this chapter, psychosocial research on these two parallel and complementary processes, impression formation and impression management in politics (McGraw, 2003), is discussed. Psychosocial research so far has mainly focused on impression formation, but its extension to the study of the perception of politicians is likely to lead to an increased focus on impression management, specifically on how politicians and opinion leaders try to influence perception through communication. This extended focus provides a great opportunity to investigate the complex interplay of different phenomena that social psychology traditionally analyses separately, such as impression formation and attribution processes on one side, and communication and persuasion on the other (Fiedler, 2007).