Abstract
The goal is to build and test a measure for identity salience and use it to explore the validity of some assumptions of the identity trauma theory (ITT). ITT suggests that the salience of identity concerns, personal, and collective enhances or negatively affect agency and self-efficacy and explain suicidality and militancy. Using samples of 880 Palestinian adolescents, we developed in the first study a measure for identity salience that included sub-scales for identity commitment and militancy. In the second study we used the measure along with measures for fear of death, mental health variables, and trauma types. Personal identity traumas were associated with decrease in fear of death; increase in mental health problems and in clinical suicide. Collective identity traumas were associated with increase in identity commitment and militancy. Militancy was found to be associated with decreased PTSD which suggests that militancy acts as anxiety buffer. Identity commitment was associated with decrease in militancy. The implications of the results were discussed.
Highlights
Identity develops through life from attachment to parents (Bowlby, 1969, 1988) to autonomy and independence to the stage of interdependence and being part of the networks of the society
Hypothesis 1: Self-efficacy, autonomous functioning and agency is at the core of identity commitment and militancy
Hypothesis 4: Annihilation anxiety, militancy and trauma variables predict suicidality: Hypothesis 5: Identity salience, annihilation anxiety (AA), as well as fear of death mediates the effects of identity traumas on suicidality, mental health variables, and militancy
Summary
Identity develops through life from attachment to parents (Bowlby, 1969, 1988) to autonomy and independence to the stage of interdependence and being part of the networks of the society. Self-definition that determines identity comprises of, at least, two fundamental self-representations or self-schemata: Personal self representations and social or group self representations that connect the individual to his status in the global interdependent network. Tajfel, & Turner, 1986) Based on this developmental framework, (ITT) differentiates between at least two different kinds of identity traumas that can challenge the existence of either: personal identity Trauma (PIT) (e.g., violation of self autonomy by rape, sexual or physical abuse, and involve fears of loss of autonomy and independent identity that the individual develops), and collective or social identity trauma (CIT) (e.g., targeted genocide, holocaust, slavery, discrimination, and different kinds of social structural violence that may triggers fears of the group subjugation or annihilation), (e.g., Kira, 2001; Kira, 2010, Kira et al, 2008). Examples of social structural violence are extreme poverty (e.g., Cassiman, 2005, Smith, Spears, & Hamstra, 1999; Walker, & Pettigrew, 1984), and extreme gender discrimination. (e.g., Kira et al, 2010)
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