Aryeh Lazar

Religious support and psychosocial well-being among a religious Jewish population

The three subscales of the Religious Support Scale assess perceived support from a person’s religious community, religious leaders, and God. This three-factor structure was replicated in the current study with a sample of 277 religious Jewish persons residing in Israel. Hierarchical canonical analysis showed that, even after controlling for general social support, Religious Leader and God Support were related to lower emotional distress, Religious Leader and Religious Community Support contributed to a higher level of life satisfaction, and Religious Community and God Support contributed to the prediction of perceived health. Findings are discussed in terms of religious support’s generalizability as a psychosocial resource for persons of various faiths.

Ageism among Israeli students: structure and demographic influences

BACKGROUND Research concerning negative attitudes toward the elderly among samples of North American respondents has uncovered two distinct yet comparable three-factor structures: (1) avoidance, antilocution and separation; and (2) discrimination, stereotypes and affective attitudes. In addition, previous research has demonstrated that men and younger people have more negative attitudes toward the elderly than do women and older people. The aim of this study is to examine the extent to which these findings can be generalized to individuals from a different culture. METHOD The Fraboni Scale of Ageism (FSA) was administered to 491 Israeli participants aged 20-50 years. RESULTS Exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation uncovered a three-factor structure, similar to previous investigations. In contrast to the literature, however, no simple group (gender, age) differences were found for ageism. However, discriminant function analysis revealed a more complex relationship between age, gender and ageism. Older males, in contrast to older females, demonstrated a tendency to perceptions of the elderly that associated avoidance of the elderly with negative stereotypes whereas older females, in contrast to younger females, held perceptions that associated avoidance of the elderly with a negative perception of the elderly persons contribution to society. CONCLUSIONS Despite cultural differences between Israel and North America, the similarity of findings provides support for the generalizabilty of the structure of attitudes toward the elderly as measured by the FSA to various cultures. In addition, the combined effect of age and gender on differential forms of ageism is complex and should be examined in future research.

The Multidimensionality of Motivation for Jewish Religious Behavior: Content, Structure, and Relationship to Religious Identity

The present study examined the content and structure of self-reported motivation for Jewish religious behavior. Initial items were generated from comprehensive and detailed responses to a semi-structured interview and an open-ended questionnaire. Principal component factor analysis with orthogonal rotation was carried out on the responses of a sample of 323 research participants to two parallel sets of the 111 items produced by the above process. The factor structures for each of these sets of items were highly similar to each other and consisted of the following five reliable factors: belief in a divine order, ethnic identity, social activity, family activity, and upbringing. These factors appear to reflect the way religious behavior can contribute to the satisfaction of a number of general human motives. Persons with different religious identities were found to attribute their performance of religious ritual to different motives, providing a partial explanation for the apparent anomaly of the performance of religious ritual by persons who identify themselves as secular.

Predicting behavior on a computer from intentions, attitudes, and experience

Research on computer attitudes has generally focused on describing the cognitive elements. The present study used the Ajzen and Fishbein model to predict intentions to work hard in a computer course and actual time on the computer. In addition, the influence of experience on predictions was examined. Results from 74 social science students showed that the Ajzen and Fishbein model is effective at predicting both intentions and behavior. Unlike previous findings, experience did not interact with attitudes. Finally, a short cognitive attitude scale was an additional significant predictor beyond intentions in explaining behavior variance.

Validating an Attitude toward Computer Scale

Although several investigators have developed computer attitude scales, predictive validity of the scales has not been examined. For purposes of the present research, a computer attitude scale was designed and tested on a group of 162 university freshmen. Two factors, the computer as a controlling device and as a challenging instrument, explained a large portion of the variance in the scale; however, only the challenging factor, with predictive validity less than .20, showed any association with future computer activity. Some explanations for the findings were mentioned.

The influence of prefeedback selection justice on perceptions of overall procedural justice and organizational attractiveness in a real-life selection procedure

Specific dimensions of perceived procedural justice of selection procedures have been found to be related to various organizational outcomes in many correlational studies. In the present study, a total of 506 Israeli young men and women in two waves of data collection (Wave 1: N = 277; Wave 2: N = 229) rated the perceived selection procedural justice of preconscription military selection procedures for élite military jobs immediately after participation in these procedures and prior to receiving results. Confirmatory factor analysis provided support for Bauer et al.s (2001) three-dimensional model of selection procedural justice: structural, social, and content job-relatedness. In Wave 2, the influence of selection procedural justice dimensions on perceptions of overall procedural selection justice, job attractiveness, and recommendation intention was tested. After controlling for preparticipation levels of these variables, the interpersonal aspect of selection justice was found to have a unique influence on postparticipation levels of all outcome measures.

RESEARCH: "A Motivational Systems Theory Approach to the Relation Between Religious Experiences and Religious Motives"

This study used motivational systems theory (MST; Ford, 1992) to clarify a number of ambiguities surrounding conceptualizations and measures of religious experience and motivation. These ambiguities refer to the differences between numinous and mystical religious experience, extrovertive and introvertive mystic religious experience, and intrinsic and extrinsic religious experience. On the basis of the assumption that personal goals and affective processes are central and relatively independent components of motivation, this investigation explores the relation between a multidimensional measure of religious motives recently developed by Lazar, Kravetz and Frederich-Kedem (2002) and Hoods (1975) multidimensional measure of religious experience. Correlation analysis of the responses of 164 young adult male Jewish orthodox students of Jewish parochial schools to the previously mentioned measures lead to a number of speculations about the ambiguities concerning religious experience and motives.

Cultural influences on religious experience and motivation

The present investigation focused on possible cultural influences on religious experience and religious motivation among 165 Orthodox Israeli Jews from Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Ethiopian cultural backgrounds. Discriminantfunction analysis was performed on measures of introvertive, extrovertive and interpretive religious experience as measured by the M-Scale (Hood 1975) and measures of religious motivation as measured by the MRBQ (Lazar, Kravetz, and Frederich-Kedem 2002). This analysis showed that a combination of experience and motivation measures -interpretive religious experience coupled with non-family based religious motivations - distinguished between these groups belonging to the same religion but coming from different cultural backgrounds, thus providing support for cultural influence on these religious variables.

Religious Support, Motives for Having Large Families, and Psychological Functioning Among Religious Jewish Mothers

The effects of religious support, maternal motivations for having large families, and their interactions on psychological functioning were assessed in a sample of 79 religious Israeli Jewish mothers of six or more children. Religious support from religious leaders, community, and G-d—as well as faith-focused maternal motivation—were all positively related to adaptive psychological functioning. In contrast, self-focused maternal motivation was negatively related to adaptive functioning. Moreover, religious support and maternal motivation were both related to psychological functioning even after controlling for social support. Finally, several significant interactions between religious support and maternal motivation emerged and are also discussed.

The Relation Between God Concept and Prayer Style Among Male Religious Israeli Jews

This study focused on the relation between the manner in which pray-ers perceive God (God concept) and their tendencies to choose various prayer types. A sample of 114 Jewish Israeli religious men responded to multidimensional measures of God concept (Benevolent, Evaluation, Omniness, Guiding, and Deisticness) and of prayer type (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication, Reception). Canonical correlation analysis uncovered a significant canonical model. Two canonical functions, explaining a total of 36.5% of the variance, were selected for interpretation. Function 1 indicated a perception of God as a benevolent and guiding God together with supplicative prayer. Function 2 indicated a perception of God as a meaningful and close God with active thanksgiving prayer. These results provide support for the notion that the manner in which an individual perceives God and the manner in which that individual chooses to pray to God are indeed related.