Ethno-Religious Implicit Bias And The Political Preference In Indonesia

The present study experimentally investigated ethno-religious implicit bias based on ethnic and religious identity affecting the social identity,intolerant tendency,and political preference.The present study also examined the role of religious belief and ethnicity in social identity construction.At the end of the studies,the researcher examined the correspondence of the ethno-religious explicit-implicit bias in political preference through the mediation model effect.The studies were divided into four studies;the first study was examined the effect of IAT,225 participants(62.7%female;Mage=23.84)were attending in the first experiment,and the second study was examined the effect of implicit-explicit ethno-religious bias in political preference,150 participants(62%female;Mage=24.7)in the second experiment.The third study was a survey study with regression analysis about Indonesian social identity,political preference,and intolerance tendency with 2270 participants(64%female;Mage=20.84),and the last experiment study was mediation model effect of ethno-religious implicit bias in affecting political preference through the social identity and intolerance tendency,with 200 participants(53%female;Mage=24.3).The study shows the role of religious identity and ethnicity both implicitly and explicitly in influencing in-group bias of alignments based on their social identity,ethno-religious implicit bias also affecting political preference through social identity and intolerant tendency.Implicit religious and ethnic bias in the IAT experiment,both with word stimulus and facial photos stimulus,consistently showed significant differences in the majority and minority groups.Substantively these findings showed that certain ethnic and religious symbols evoked the implicit bias toward in-group and out-group in particular.Religious identity and ethnic identity were significant predictors of the social identity construction in Indonesia.The research shows that religious identity and ethnicity affect Indonesian political constellation.In line with the tendency of intolerance significantly affects more conservative political choices or political preferences based on similar social identities.The mediation model effect of ethno-religious implicit bias toward political preferences through social identity and the intolerant tendency was significant and fully mediated;this result supports the researcher's assumption that explicit and implicit can routes to attitudes affect distinctly but generally is a complementary process.In conclusion,implicit bias or partiality towards in-group causes a strengthening of prejudice and a tendency towards intolerant behavior,significantly influencing one's political preference for conservative politicians or parties attributed to religious identity background.All in all,the findings suggest religious-ethnic identity has the leading role in identity politics that affects Indonesian voters' voting behavior.