Lily Chernyak-Hai

A sense of self-perceived collective victimhood in intractable conflicts

A sense of self-perceived collective victimhood emerges as a major theme in the ethos of conflict of societies involved in intractable conflict and is a fundamental part of the collective memory of the conflict. This sense is defined as a mindset shared by group members that results from a perceived intentional harm with severe consequences, inflicted on the collective by another group. This harm is viewed as undeserved, unjust and immoral, and one that the group could not prevent. The article analyses the nature of the self-perceived collective sense of victimhood in the conflict, its antecedents, the functions that it fulfils for the society and the consequences that result from this view.

Helping them stay where they are: status effects on dependency/autonomy-oriented helping.

On the basis of expectation states theory and Weiners attributional model of help giving (Weiner, 1980), we predicted that low-status help seekers would be viewed as chronically dependent and their need as due to lack of ability, leading to the giving of dependency-oriented help (i.e., full solution to the problem). High-status help seekers were expected to be viewed as competent and their request as representing their high motivation to overcome a transient difficulty, resulting in autonomy-oriented help (i.e., tools to solve the problem). Help seeking is viewed as a stigma-consistent behavior that implies weakness when help seekers are low-status individuals and as strength when they are high-status individuals. Three experiments supported these predictions. The 4th experiment indicated that low-status persons who seek autonomy-oriented help are not seen as chronically dependent. Implications of these findings for helping and inequality are discussed.

“Justified dependency”: Effects of perceived stability of social hierarchy and level of system justification on help-seeking behavior of low-status group members

Recent research on intergroup helping has shown that receiving and seeking help can be a way in which groups assert or challenge the existing hierarchy. The present research, consisting of two studies conducted in the Arab–Jewish Israeli context, examined how the manipulated perceived stability of social hierarchy and dispositional levels of system justification (SJ) influence the willingness of Arab participants to seek assistance from a Jewish helper (representing low- and high-status groups in Israel, respectively). As expected, findings indicate that Arab participants who perceive the social hierarchy as just and stable, show a significantly higher preference to seek dependency-oriented help from Jews. On the other hand, those characterized as low SJs report overall low willingness to seek help from Jewish group members, but show some readiness to seek autonomy-oriented help when status relations between Arabs and Jews are perceived as stable. Theoretical and practical implications for intergroup helping relations are discussed.

Six habits to enhance MET performance under stress: A discussion paper reviewing team mechanisms for improved patient outcomes

Effective team decision making has the potential to improve the quality of health care outcomes. Medical Emergency Teams (METs), a specific type of team led by either critical care nurses or physicians, must respond to and improve the outcomes of deteriorating patients. METs routinely make decisions under conditions of uncertainty and suboptimal care outcomes still occur. In response, the development and use of Shared Mental Models (SMMs), which have been shown to promote higher team performance under stress, may enhance patient outcomes. This discussion paper specifically focuses on the development and use of SMMs in the context of METs. Within this process, the psychological mechanisms promoting enhanced team performance are examined and the utility of this model is discussed through the narrative of six habits applied to MET interactions. A two stage, reciprocal model of both nonanalytic decision making within the acute care environment and analytic decision making during reflective action learning was developed. These habits are explored within the context of a MET, illustrating how applying SMMs and action learning processes may enhance team-based problem solving under stress. Based on this model, we make recommendations to enhance MET decision making under stress. It is suggested that the corresponding habits embedded within this model could be imparted to MET members and tested by health care researchers to assess the efficacy of this integrated decision making approach in respect to enhanced team performance and patient outcomes.

Relationships Between Workplace Deviance Interacted With Gender and Marital Status: The Correspondence Analysis Approach

This exploratory study employed correspondence analysis to examine how employees’ gender and marital status might affect levels of interpersonal and organizational deviant workplace behaviors in the workplace. The subjects were 122 employees from a large electricity supplier company in Israel. Four levels of deviant behaviors relating to interpersonal and organizational deviance behaviors were generated according to their “typicality” as follows: (1) “untypical” (z-score less than −1.00), (2) “somewhat untypical” (−1.00–0), (3) “somewhat typical” (0–1.00), and (4) “typical” (larger than 1.00). We assessed the marital status categories by gender: unmarried males and females, divorced males and females, and males and females who were married. Results indicated that married men and divorced women exhibited mostly typical types of deviance. Both married and divorced men reported untypical deviance for both types of deviant behaviors. Married women only reported somewhat untypical deviance for both types of deviant behaviors. Accordingly, we suggest that psychological stressors, as well as cultural and societal expectations, may account for the obtained differences. Yet, future research is needed to shed light on underlying mechanisms.

Gendered Help at the Workplace: Implications for Organizational Power Relations:

One of the most thoroughly studied aspects of prosocial workplace behavior is organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Yet, the definition of OCB seems to overlook the fact that help-giving acts may be of different types with different consequences for both giver and recipient. The present research explores workplace help-giving behavior by investigating the importance of gender as a factor that facilitates or inhibits specific types of help that empower and disempower independent coping: autonomy- and dependency-oriented help, respectively. A pilot and two following studies were conducted. The pilot study empirically assessed which acts would be clearly perceived by participants as representing both types of help. Then, using the descriptions of these acts, Study 1 examined which type of help would be perceived as most likely to be given by a male or female employee to a male or female colleague in a sample of 226 participants (78% women). Study 2 explored which type of help participants perceived as one they would rather receive from a male or female helper in a sample of 170 participants (65% women). Our findings indicate that male and female respondents who rated men giving help were more likely to expect them to give autonomy-oriented help, especially to women. There were no significant differences in dependency-oriented help. Further, women preferred to receive more autonomy-oriented help than men did, regardless of the help-giver’s gender; no significant results were found for men. Implications for OCB and workplace power relations are discussed.