Studies that have compared individuals from majority and minority groups during or following stressful events have found minorities to be more vulnerable to distress [1,2,3]. Moreover, adolescents have been found to be at risk for psychological distress and posttraumatic stress reaction following an incident of political violence [4]. The Bedouin Arabs in the Negev region of Israel number 230,000 and comprise 23% of the population of the Negev [5]. As an ethnic minority group, the Bedouin Arab population in Israel faces enormous difficulties in the social, cultural, political, and financial domains of everyday life [6]. This society is characterized by a young population (over 60% are under age 19) and high levels of poverty [6]. Bedouin Arab society also differs from Jewish Israeli society in terms of language, religion, and other cultural characteristics [7]. Bedouin Arab culture is highly collectivistic, patriarchal, and authoritarian [8] and differs from Jewish Israeli culture in terms of its emphasis on collectivistic values [9, 10].
Bedouin Arab society exhibits a high degree of power distance, which means each person has a place and there is no need for justification [9]. This cultural context accepts a hierarchical order in which inequalities based on gender and ages are common [11, 12]. We suggest that these values may affect the sense of power and levels of stress experienced by young individuals.
During November 2012, as hundreds of missiles were fired from Gaza at cities and other sites around Israel, an intensive military operation was directed at and inside the Gaza Strip. Those events of political violence may have imposed additional stress upon Bedouin Arab adolescents due to the confusing political situation with which they were faced. On the one hand, these adolescents felt angry with the Israeli leadership which directed the Israeli military to bomb Gaza. Some of these adolescents had close relatives in the Gaza Strip (Welfare Office, Rahat Municipality, personal communication, June 12, 2014). On the other hand, they themselves were living under the threat of missiles, which were falling on their city, Rahat.
The Jewish adolescents in our study belong to the majority culture in Israel (74.8%). Jewish Israeli society is characterized as more individualistic and less authoritarian than Bedouin Arab society and places a greater emphasis on separation, independence, personal development, and achievement [9, Welfare Office, Rahat Municipality, personal communication, June 12, 2014]. In comparison to Bedouin Arab society, Jewish Israeli society tends to be more modern and Western. The Jewish Israeli family is a nuclear system characterized by democratic family relations with relatively permissive parental control [8, 13]. During the escalated political violence, Jewish communities in southern Israel faced the same missile threat.
In this study, we compare coping resources and their associations with stress reactions among Bedouin and Jewish adolescents during this period of escalated political violence. The aim of this study was to explore the prevalence of coping resources and stress reactions among Bedouin Arab and Jewish adolescents, in order to evaluate differences in vulnerability to distress and resilience between these groups.
The salutogenic model and sense of coherence
Researchers and theorists within virtually every subdiscipline of psychology have acknowledged the relevance of subjective construal and self-construal. While construal is a perception of the individual’s surroundings, self-construal is perception of one’s self [14]. The concept of construal can be seen in the works of many social psychologists including Kurt Lewin’s recognition of the importance of a subjective reality and its effect on one’s personal significance [15], and Brunswik’s theories of social perception [16]. Construal was once viewed as an obstruction in one’s perception of the world, but that understanding has evolved and construal is now viewed as a mechanism that can explain how or why individuals think the way they do [17].
Later, in the mid-1970s, a theory from medical sociology was developed and called the salutogenic model. This model suggests that life is full of stressful events and (similar to the construal concept) that the subjective meaning and the individual’s perception of an event have more important consequences than the event itself [18]. Thus, it would appear to be crucial to explore which resources lead an individual to perceive an event in a particular manner and to assign a particular subjective meaning to that event. Antonovsky [18] suggested two main concepts to provide a comprehensive answer to this question: generalized resistance resources (GRRs) and sense of coherence (SOC). GRRs include characteristics of the individual, group, or environment (subculture or society) that promote effective coping with stressful situations. Internal GRRs include cognitive and emotional resources and external GRRs include financial resources, living conditions, education, and social networks. The more GRRs one possesses the better one’s chances of overcoming a stressor [19]. According to Antonovsky [18], SOC strength is derived from GRRs.
Sense of coherence refers to an enduring attitude and measures how people view life, as well as how they identify, use, and reuse their GRRs to maintain and develop their health in the face of stressful situations. SOC has important implications for the ways in which individuals react to various kinds of stressful situations (for reviews of this topic, see [20, 21]).
Empirical research has shown that individualistic and collectivistic societies have different effects on individuals’ self-concepts and interpersonal relationships, as well as on their emotional and cognitive development [10, 15, 22]. Kagitcibasi [23] distinguished between collectivist and individualist societies, describing them as “the cultures of relatedness and separateness,” respectively. Collectivist cultures are characterized by a special concern with relationships and their maintenance. In collectivistic cultures that encourage a view of the self as interdependent, individuals are strongly motivated to adjust to and meet the expectations of socially meaningful others [16, 24]. Individualistic cultures, on the other hand, tend to encourage a view of the self as independent and in those cultures individuals are strongly motivated to confirm positive, self-defining attributes of the self, such as competence and efficacy [25]. Accordingly, it can be assumed that different cultural contexts may affect how people define themselves and view life, as well as which factors are considered to be resources and how individuals prefer to use and reuse their GRRs to maintain and develop their health in the face of stressful situations. Independent of collectivism and individualism, SOC is associated with lower levels of depression, neuroticism, and anxiety, as well as greater life satisfaction [21]. Based on the salutogenic approach, SOC is assumed to mediate relationships between exposure to political violence and stress reactions [26]. Individuals with a strong SOC will be less likely to feel threatened by events of war, such as missile attacks, and will be less emotionally vulnerable after having experienced such events [20, 27].
Several studies have explored SOC among individualistic majority and collectivistic minority groups around the world and the results of those studies have been inconsistent. While some collectivistic minority groups exhibit strong SOC that is similar to that of individualistic majority groups [28, 29], other collectivistic minority groups have been shown to exhibit weaker SOC than their individualistic majority counterparts (e.g., [1, 30]).
Studies of salutogenesis among adolescents have found that the relations between SOC and health or mental health among adolescents are similar to those observed among adults (e.g., [31, 32]). The better one’s health is perceived to be, the higher one’s SOC and, at the same time, the less severe one’s subjective health or mental-health complaints.
In addition to the collectivistic cultural orientation, the Bedouin Arab community in southern Israel is underprivileged in many areas (e.g., social, educational, political, and financial; [33]). Thus, Bedouin Arab adolescents have lower levels of GRRs (limited financial resources, harsh living conditions, lower levels of education) and SOC, as compared to their Jewish peers (e.g., [30]). Moreover, these adolescents belong to a society that is currently undergoing a rapid transition process.
Hope
According to Staats [34], hope is “intrinsically a positive affective cognition in the subjective present” (p. 22). Hope consists of cognitive elements of visualization and expectation, as well as affective elements of feeling good about expected pleasant events or outcomes [35]. However, Staats placed more emphasis on the affective component.
Other researchers have offered different definitions of hope and emphasized different components of this construct. For example, Folkman [36] discussed hope from the vantage of stress and coping theory. Her main assumption was that hope is essential when we need to confront stressful situations, but is not always available. Moreover, hope can sustain coping, when the individual moves forward to deal with the demands of his or her new challenging reality. Previous research has recognized the importance of hope as a resource that has lasting effects on an individual’s ability to cope with stressful situations [36, 37]. Hope seems to be particularly important among adolescents, who are known to be vulnerable to depression, pessimism, and learned helplessness [37]. Hope has individualistic (hope for the self) and collectivistic (hope for the other) components [38].
As members of a highly collectivistic culture, defined by Schwartz and Bilsky [39] as a culture that prioritizes “in-group goals over personal goals” (p. 140), Bedouin individuals are motivated to wish for and promote the goals of others (the collective) before or at the expense of their own personal goals [9, 40, 41]. However, these youths may also be affected by Western individualistic values through rapid change process and those values would encourage them to wish for, expect to achieve, and promote their own personal goals [42].
A study that examined individual and collective hope among Israeli and Palestinian youth during periods of political violence reported similarly high levels of individual hope among the two groups. However, levels of collective hope were higher among Palestinian adolescents than among their Israeli counterparts [43]. The authors of that work attributed these results to cultural differences. To the best of our knowledge, no research has been conducted to identify the unique role of individual or collective hope in predicting reactions to stress.
The role of demographic variables
Gender has been found to have a significant effect on stress reactions. The majority of studies reported in the literature confirm the importance of this gender effect, with girls generally expressing more distress and internalization of difficulties than boys. Boys, on the other hand, exhibit more externalization of problems and more risk-taking behavior [44, 45].
Age is considered to be a protective factor against stress. Several studies have found that younger children exhibit more severe psychopathology (e.g., somatic complaints, depression, and distress) in response to stress, as compared to older children and adolescents [46]. However, other studies focused on ongoing exposure to political violence reported no age effects [46, 47].
Research hypotheses
This study was conducted during a military operation in the Gaza Strip known as Operation Pillar of Clouds during which southern Israel was under intensive missile attack. We examined how coping resources (i.e., SOC, individual hope, and collective hope) explain the stress reactions of state anger and state anxiety. The two stress reactions were analyzed separately.
In accordance with the research goals, the following research hypotheses were formulated:
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1.
Based on previous research, we expected that the Bedouin Arab adolescents would report lower levels of SOC than the Jewish adolescents. We expected to find higher levels of collective hope among the Bedouin Arab adolescents. In addition, we expected the Bedouin Arab adolescents to present higher levels of state anger than the Jewish adolescents, but similar levels of anxiety [30].
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2.
We expected to find negative associations between SOC or hope components and stress reactions (state anger and/or state anxiety). Stronger correlations were expected between SOC and stress reactions among Jewish adolescents; however, stronger correlations were expected between hope components and outcomes among Bedouin Arab adolescents [30, 43, 48, 49].
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3.
Based on previous research, we expected SOC to play a significant role in explaining stress reactions mainly among the Jewish group [48, 49]. However, we also expected that hope components would play a significant role in explaining stress reactions mainly among the Bedouin Arab group [30, 43].