Existing research on public opinion under authoritarianism focuses on the deliberative half of cognition. Yet in psychology, implicit attitudes and subconscious associations are often viewed as foundational, the basis for explicit attitudes and behavior. This paper adapts the well-known Implicit Association Test (IAT) to study Egyptian citizens’ attitudes toward President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Roughly 58% of respondents hold positive implicit attitudes towards Sisi, which suggests citizens have more positive associations with the dictator than conventionally assumed. The data also allows for an investigation of attitude dissociation, whereby individuals hold distinct implicit and explicit attitudes towards a target object. Government employees and Coptic Christians are more likely to hold positive explicit attitudes towards Sisi but negative or neutral implicit attitudes. Students appear to systematically engage in inverse dissociation– they voice criticism towards Sisi despite holding more positive implicit attitudes. The paper closes with a discussion of the merits of the IAT relative to other measures of regime support.
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