Ika Rahma Susilawati, Rahmat Hidayat, Galang Lufityanto, Shahla Ostovar
Tax compliance is a significant challenge in public finance. It is shaped not only by legal enforcement but also by taxpayers’ perceptions and cognitive evaluations. Traditional self-report methods are limited by social desirability bias and may fail to capture the automatic dimensions of tax attitudes. This study introduces and validates the Tax Single-Target Implicit Association Test (Tax ST-IAT), developed through three sequential studies in Indonesia (N = 302) to measure implicit cognitive representations of taxation. The findings showed that the Tax ST-IAT performed reliably, displaying stable latency patterns and high response accuracy. The findings also revealed an ambivalent pattern of implicit representations. Positive associations, including public welfare and development, coexisted with negative themes that remained easily accessible at the automatic level of cognition. Theoretically, the study advances dual-process perspectives by demonstrating how implicit and explicit tax evaluations may diverge. Practically, the findings suggest that policymakers may strengthen voluntary compliance by amplifying positive implicit associations while addressing persistent negative ones in public communication. © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Department of Psychology, Universitas Brawijaya, Malang, Indonesia; Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Department of Psychology, Wenzhou-Kean University, Zhejiang Province, Wenzhou, China; Faculty of Social Science and Liberal Arts, UCSI University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
