Determinants of Students' Perceptions of Conventional and Unconventional War Threats

Abstract

This study focuses on Israeli students' perceptions of two war threats: the Iranian and the Hezbollah war hazards. We examined potential determinants of these two perceived threats: individual and public resilience, sense of personal danger, subjective well-being, and denial tendency. We examined further associations between these perceived threats and biographical characteristics: gender, family income, exposure to negative events, and political attitudes. Two hundred eighty-two undergraduate students in this study rated various sources of security threats endangering Israel, as well as potential antecedents of these perceived threats. Results indicated that students rated the Iranian hazard as less threatening than the Hezbollah hazard. Exposure to negative events, political attitudes, public resilience, and sense of personal danger significantly predicted the level of danger assigned to the Iranian threat. Gender, political attitudes, and sense of personal danger significantly predicted the perceived danger of the Hezbollah threat. Low but significant correlation linked denial tendencies with perceived Iranian threat, but not with Hezbollah threat.