Measuring Implicit Political Extremism through Implicit Association Tests.

This article presents the development and application of the first Implicit Association Test (IAT) designed to measure general implicit extremist attitudes in Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. The study finds that implicit extremist attitudes, which reflect automatic cognitive processes, are positively but weakly correlated with explicit self-reported extremism, indicating that implicit measures capture different aspects of extremist attitudes, particularly among higher-educated and nonreligious individuals who may underreport extremism explicitly. The research addresses challenges in measuring implicit attitudes toward abstract political concepts like extremism and democracy, demonstrating that about 10–20% of respondents show implicit extremist preferences not reflected in explicit measures. These findings suggest that implicit attitudes provide valuable insights for understanding political and religious extremism and may inform future research and prevention programs related to radicalization.