Title Participants Abstract "Mirror, mirror on the wall" "Philippe De Vries" "The relevance of candidate image research as an element of political impression management has been scrutinized and contested, as it has been the case for candidate image research in many other scientific domains. For decades the emphasis of political science research was on more conventional topics such as the influences of political ideology, the impact of political rhetoric, the role of political structures and institutions. Nevertheless, with the birth of mass media and maybe even more so with the more recent introduction of social media, the emergence of a predominant visual culture has put candidate image at the centre of political impression formation processes. The managing of political impressions deserves particular attention and profound research. In this article we present an overview of relevant theories and research linked to candidate image within political impression management. The article will firstly discuss how the trend towards perception politics emerged and will revisit the role of perceptions and the formation of politically relevant impressions. Secondly, this article will focus on the politically suitable appearance and the concept of candidate image as an important part of both offline and online political impression management." "To give or not to give" "David Walewijns, Wannes Heirman, Rowan Daneels" "This study examines the prosocial effects of virtual reality (VR) technology on donation behavior, using a 360° video documentary supporting the nongovernmental organization Charity: Water. Previous research has shown how VR can be used as a way to evoke empathy towards other people. There is, however, limited research on how this technology can be used to elicit more donations for charitable organizations. This paper aims to investigate whether the use of an emotion-inducing 360° video in VR leads to higher donation rates. We conducted a between-participants experiment and collected data from 150 young adults (age 18–25). Results reveal how VR – and especially empathy – significantly impacts donation intentions. Although donation intentions were found to be higher after watching the VR video, many participants were skeptical about making an actual donation. Implications and future research regarding the capabilities of VR technology in eliciting donations and resolving donation uncertainty are discussed." "Judging a book by its cover" "Stephanie De Munter, Philippe De Vries, Christ'l De Landtsheer" "Every single day we are exposed to an almost unstoppable flow of images which has only been encouraged by the rise of social media platforms such as Instagram or YouTube. The potential of these social media channels has not remained unnoticed or unexplored by politicians and political parties. Social media platforms in general, but especially visually oriented platforms such as Instagram, encourage a shift from argumentation on political issues to the construction of an appealing public persona (Diedkova, De Landtsheer & De Vries, 2019). By drawing on the political impression management framework of De Landtsheer (2004), it is argued, a formal political appearance taps into perceptions of leadership, intelligence and political suitability in the eye of the beholder. Nevertheless, social media play a new and unparalleled role within political campaigning (Bossetta, 2018; Filimonov, Russmann & Svensson, 2016; Lilleker, Tenscher & Stetka, 2015) and may add a significant new dimension to the existing theoretical framework.The central thesis of this study is: did a social media platform like Instagram contribute to a shift in voters’ perception of political suitability from a formal image towards an increasingly informal image?" "De psychologie van de politiek" "Christ'l De Landtsheer" "Politiek is mensenwerk. Dat leert de politieke psychologie. Politiek bestaat niet alleen uit instellingen als het parlement of de regering of uit actoren als politieke partijen en vakbonden, politiek wordt gemaakt door mensen. De politieke psychologie bestudeert de psychologie van de politiek en het verband tussen politieke en psychologische processen waarin communicatie een cruciale rol speelt. De psychologie van de politiek brengt voor het eerst in het Nederlandse taalgebied deze wetenschap in kaart. Het boek bundelt daarbij inzichten over de politieke retoriek, waarbij gefocust wordt op de retoriek in het werk van Karl Marx en Friedrich Engels, en op actuele cases als de retoriek van de financiële crisis en van IS. Tegelijkertijd schetst de auteur de rol van persoonlijkheid in de politiek, met politiek-psychologische profielen van internationale politieke leiders als de Britse premier Boris Johnson, de Chinese president Xi Jinping en de Nederlandse premier Mark Rutte. Ook andere gebieden van politieke psychologie als bijvoorbeeld politieke socialisatie komen in dit boek volop aan bod." "Kinderen kiezen hun witte burgemeester" "Christ'l De Landtsheer, Lieuwe Kalkhoven, Wannes Heirman" "Dit hoofdstuk onderzoekt hoe kinderen in hun stemgedrag worden geleid door stereotypen en door hun sociale achtergrond. Stereotypen - overtuigingen die we bezitten over sociale groepen (Brown, 1986: 188) – spelen een belangrijke rol bij de vorming van politieke overtuigingen door volwassenen, maar hoe zit het met kinderen? De studie volgt een nieuw pad, omdat het politieke socialisatie verbindt met politiek impressiemanagement." "Brexit and political personality" "Christ'l De Landtsheer, Shana Hollander, Peter Maene" "This article focuses on the role of personality in the case of Brexit, the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) on January 31, 2020. A decisive step in Brexit were the general elections on December 12th, 2019 UK, in which Boris Johnson, Conservative Prime Minister of UK and advocate of Brexit, defeated Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party and “neutral” about Brexit. Political psychology considers personality as a major factor in political developments. This article presents the results of an assessment of the personalities of Johnson and Corbyn, and it argues that the personality of these key players influenced the Brexit process. The analysis is based on the theory and methods of Immelman (MIDC, 2004; PEI – Personal Electability Index, 2019), Immelman & Steinberg (2008), and Mastenbroek (1987). Our findings suggest that Johnson’s charismatic personality, his dominant leadership style, and his negotiating skills contributed to his electoral victory and to the realization of Brexit. Johnson profited from Corbyn’s lack of personal charisma and from his undecisive and divisive leadership regarding Brexit." "Later word ik strateeg" "Philippe De Vries, Maarten Debecker" "Understanding adolescents' unfriending on Facebook by applying an extended theory of planned behaviour" "Karen Verswijvel, Wannes Heirman, Michel Walrave, Kris Hardies" "Becoming friends on Facebook does not always guarantee long-term friendships as users have the possibility to unfriend people. This unfriending behaviour is frequently occurring and might have negative consequences for both parties. To gain insight into the factors influencing adolescents unfriending, the current study made use of an extended version of the theory of planned behaviour. To enrich the theoretical framework, we included antecedents related to adolescents friendship management on Facebook, namely their number of friends, their friendship acceptance threshold, and their degree of public communication. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 1.117 adolescents. SEM analyses indicated that both subjective norm and attitude were related to behavioural intention, which in turn was related to adolescents unfriending behaviour. Perceived behavioural control was only associated with adolescents unfriending behaviour. Regarding the additional factors, the size of adolescents friend network was positively related to their confidence in the ability to unfriend people. Adolescents friendship acceptance threshold was negatively related to their attitude, whereas adolescents degree of public communication was positively associated with their perceived behavioural control and the experienced social pressure to unfriend." "Sharenting, is it a good or a bad thing? Understanding how adolescents think and feel about sharenting on social network sites" "Karen Verswijvel, Michel Walrave, Kris Hardies, Wannes Heirman" "It is common nowadays for parents to share information about their children on social network sites (SNSs). However, little is known on how adolescents think and feel about this sharenting behavior. Therefore, this study explores adolescents' perception of the reasons why parents share information about their adolescent children on SNSs, and adolescents' attitudes toward sharenting. A survey study was conducted among 817 adolescents. Factor analyses pointed toward four perceived sharenting motives: parental advice motives, social motives, impression management motives, and informative-archiving motives. Adolescents believed that parents mainly shared information about their children due to informative-archiving motives. They believed that parental advice motives were less common. Preliminary analyses pointed out that adolescents largely disapproved of sharenting. They mainly considered it as embarrassing and useless. Regression analysis indicated that when adolescents perceived sharenting as an impression management issue, the more negative their attitudes were toward sharenting. Conversely, the more adolescents thought that parents shared information about their children due to informative-archiving motives, the less they disapproved of sharenting. Additionally, when adolescents themselves disclosed more personal information or when they were more often confronted with sharenting, they had more positive attitudes toward sharenting. Adolescents who were more concerned about their online privacy, were more likely to disapprove of sharenting." "Wat vraagt u voor uw stem?" "Philippe De Vries"