The perception of politicians’ morality: Attacks and defenses.

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