Evaluating political candidates` image. An experimental approach

The quality of a democracy is closely linked to people`s ability to make reasonable and rational choices, as history has shown us. The democratic choice also means the ability of the electorate to make informed and rational decisions, the emphasis being on the quality of political decisions. In other words, using a rational judgment, voters should elect candidates based on relevant attributes such as their experience, intelligence, leadership abilities and positions on policy issues, while the superficial information that does speak about the leaders` competence should be ignored. Nonetheless, even this predisposition of the voters to rely on shallow and unconscious decisions represents the point of interest of recent studies in political sciences and psychology. There is also the case when people cannot explain their voting behavior and preferences about politicians that lead us to believe that they may have an emotional reaction to politics not so much as conscious processing of political information.