Anxiety and coping with community disasters: The Israeli experience

This study compared anxiety levels and coping strategies in Israeli adults during the Al-Aqsa Intifada (n = 707) and under ballistic missile attacks targeted at Israeli civilians during the Persian Gulf War (n = 328). In view of the differences among the two disaster situations in terms of severity of impact, scope, duration, predictability, and controllability, it was hypothesized that higher levels of state anxiety would be observed for the terror attack than for the missile attack crisis. Furthermore, problem-focused coping was predicted to be more salient than emotion-focused coping during the Gulf War—at a time where more protective action could be taken. Overall, the data supported the hypotheses. The data are discussed and explicated in the context of stress and coping theory and research.     

Hebrew Sources on the Baal Shem Tov: Usability vs. Reliability

This article begins by arguing that there is no such thing as a typical or unbiased historical source. Every source genre and each source has limitations and strengths. For any given source these characteristics can change depending on the purpose the source is used for. In approaching any source the historian should ask how, given its nature, the source can appropriately be used. The criterion for evaluating sources should be usability rather than reliability. The author then goes on to discuss the usability of three key sources associated with the biography of the putative founder of Hasidism, Israel Baal Shem Tov: The Holy Epistle, his sayings as quoted in the books of Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoye [Po?onne], and the stories in Shivhei habesht. While pointing out some ways in which he understands these sources to have been used inappropriately, the author concludes that all three sources do indeed have historiographical uses. These depend on a critical understanding of their genres, of how and why these sources came to be written, and of the history of each text.     

Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and the Kabbalah

Medieval Jewish mysticism was a multiform project in which Maimonides played different roles, for different mystical streams, and at different times. Maimonides' impact on Kabbalah was such that understanding the histories of both medieval Jewish philosophy and mysticism requires a more integrative approach than is usually adopted. The investigation into the activities of Abraham Abulafia as Maimonidean commentator and publicist undertaken here illustrates this point.     

Human preferences are biased towards associative information

There is ample evidence that the brain generates predictions that help interpret sensory input. To build such predictions the brain capitalizes upon learned statistical regularities and associations (e.g., “A” is followed by “B”; “C” appears together with “D”). The centrality of predictions to mental activities gave rise to the hypothesis that associative information with predictive value is perceived as intrinsically valuable. Such value would ensure that this information is proactively searched for, thereby promoting certainty and stability in our environment. We therefore tested here whether, all else being equal, participants would prefer stimuli that contained more rather than less associative information. In Experiments 1 and 2 we used novel, meaningless visual shapes and showed that participants preferred associative shapes over shapes that had not been associated with other shapes during training. In Experiment 3 we used pictures of real-world objects and again demonstrated a preference for stimuli that elicit stronger associations. These results support our proposal that predictive information is affectively tagged, and enhance our understanding of the formation of everyday preferences.     

Affective value and associative processing share a cortical substrate

The brain stores information in an associative manner so that contextually related entities are connected in memory. Such associative representations mediate the brain’s ability to generate predictions about which other objects and events to expect in a given context. Likewise, the brain encodes and is able to rapidly retrieve the affective value of stimuli in our environment. That both contextual associations and affect serve as building blocks of numerous mental functions often makes interpretation of brain activation ambiguous. A critical brain region where such activation has often resulted in equivocal interpretation is the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), which has been implicated separately in both affective and associative processing. To characterize its role more unequivocally, we tested whether activity in the mOFC was most directly attributable to affective processing, associative processing, or a combination of both. Subjects performed an object recognition task while undergoing fMRI scans. Objects varied independently in their affective valence and in their degree of association with other objects (associativity). Analyses revealed an overlapping sensitivity whereby the left mOFC responded both to increasingly positive affective value and to stronger associativity. These two properties individually accounted for mOFC response, even after controlling for their interrelationship. The role of the mOFC is either general enough to encompass associations that link stimuli both with reinforcing outcomes and with other stimuli or abstract enough to use both valence and associativity in conjunction to inform downstream processes related to perception and action. These results may further point to a fundamental relationship between associativity and positive affect.     

Gender differences in loss of psychological resources following experimentally-induced vicarious stress

Abstract

The present research focuses on gender differences in resource loss, perceived threat, and negative affective reactions induced by experimental manipulation of vicarious stress. Israeli students (54.7% women) were randomly allocated to one of two conditions: (1) Threat Condition (n=98), in which participants were exposed to a video film depicting terror attacks and (2) Control Condition (n=30), in which participants viewed a video film depicting a series of non-emotive news broadcasts. Participants also completed measures of mastery, optimism, and self-esteem. The data indicated that whereas under the Threat Condition women scored lower on psychological resources and higher on perceived threat than men, no significant gender differences were observed under the Control Condition. A path analysis revealed that gender was directly related to perceived threat and resource loss, which, in turn, were related to negative affect. In addition, a greater sense of mastery was related to lower resource loss. Overall, these experimental findings suggest that gender and mastery bear prominent effects on cognitive and emotional reactions to vicarious life threat.     

A multidimensional approach to explore cross-cultural differences in coping behavior: comparing Druze and Jews in Israel

Assuming that culture is a multidimensional variable, the current study explored the possibility that the interactions between ethnicity and other culture-related variables--rather than ethnicity alone--will better describe differences in coping behavior. In the study, cross-cultural differences among Israeli Jews and Israeli Druze in the use of various ways of coping were examined while also taking into account respondents' gender, age, self-esteem, sense of coherence, national identification, and religiosity. Comparing Israeli Jews and Israeli Druze, results indicate significant differences in levels of religiosity and coherence. Referring to coping behavior, findings show that differences in ways of coping could be attributed mainly to gender differences rather than ethnic differences Thus, at least in the case of comparing Israeli Jews vs. Israeli Druze, religiosity and gender are powerful determinants of coping behavior, while ethnicity has only a limited contribution in explaining variance in a preferred way of coping. It is suggested that ethnicity has a moderating role in shaping coping behavior, as it might influence person's self-perception and level of emotionality, which in turn shape the person's ways of coping. Future explorations among various age and ethnic groups are needed to enable generalization of the current study findings.