An Intervention Program Cultivating Emotional Social Skills in Israeli Arab Adolescents

Abstract

Arab society in Israel is a traditional patriarchal culture holding collectivistic, interdependent values. Arabs in Israel receive basic human rights and privileges, but the Israeli society treats them as a separate minority group. The basic premise of the current study was that improving the emotional intelligence and the empathy abilities of adolescent Arabs in general – through a uni-national group program – would result in stronger empathy towards Jews in Israel – a change that would improve the Arab participant's attitudes and behaviors towards the Jews in Israel. The research accompanying the implementation of the program was quasi-experimental. The main goals of the current intervention were to improve the intra-personal, interpersonal and inter-group skills and functioning, to strengthen awareness and skills in identifying and understanding emotions in themselves and other people – their causes and effects, to improve emotion regulation and ability to manage other people's emotions, to improve empathy towards members of the in-group (Arabs) and the out-group (Jews), to reduce stereotypes against minority groups, and to improve Jewish-Arab relations. The sample included 172 Arab 10th and 11th grade adolescents in northern Israel. The main research hypotheses were: 1) The participants' emotional intelligence and empathy towards Arabs will be higher at the end of the program than at its beginning; 2) The participants' empathy towards Jews will be higher at the end of the program than at its beginning.