Rachel Seginer

Future orientation in times of threat and challenge: How resilient adolescents construct their future:

Drawing on the importance of future orientation for adolescent development this analysis presents a model describing how future orientation is affected by high challenge (or resilience) in the face of political violence. The analysis consists of three parts. The first two present future orientation conceptualization and the psychological processes underlying threat and challenge/resilience, respectively. Consequently, the third part outlines an integrated model positing that the effect of challenge/resilience on future orientation is mediated by hope and moderated by four factors: cultural orientations, developmental period, interpersonal relationships, and intrapersonal characteristics.

Tracks and transitions-A comparison of adolescent future-oriented goals, explorations, and commitments in australia, israel, and finland

Abstract It has been suggested that age-related normative demands and institutional tracks play an important role in the development of adolescent future orientation, identity explorations, and Commitments. In order to study this, 71 Australian boys and 49 girls, 23 Israeli boys and 23 girls, and 36 Finnish boys and 66 girls aged between 16 and 17 were investigated. They filled in the Hopes and Fears Questionnaire measuring the content and temporal extension of goals, and the Exploration and Commitment Inventory. The results showed that developmental tasks, role transitions, and institutional tracks play an important role in the development of adolescent future orientation, explorations, and commitments. Due to earlier school transitions, Australian adolescents expected that their hopes related to education and work, and education-related concerns, would be realized earlier than Finnish and Israeli youths. In turn, because of military service commitments of several years, Israeli youths expected that both...

Family Environment, Educational Aspirations, and Academic Achievement in Two Cultural Settings

This study tested a four-step model consisting of family background, perceived parental support and demandingness, educational aspirations, and academic achievement. The model was estimated on data collected from eighth graders (N = 686) growing up in two cultural settings: transition to modernity (Israeli Arabs) and Western (Israeli Jews). LISREL analyses performed separately for the four ethnicity-by-gender groups showed good fit of the model and supported the predicted differences in the links between the latent variables across ethnicity and gender. Specifically, family background had direct and indirect effects on the academic achievement of Arab but not Jewish adolescents. The indirect family background-academic achievement path showed gender differences only for the Arab adolescents via educational aspirations for girls and parental demandingness for boys, and parental demandingness was directly related to academic achievement of Arab boys and Jewish adolescents. Discussion explained ethnic and gender differences in terms of demographic and sociocultural conditions.

The indirect link between perceived parenting and adolescent future orientation: A multiple-step model

The indirect links between perceived mothers’ and fathers’ autonomous-accepting parenting and future orientation were examined in a mediational model consisting of five steps: perceived mothers’ and fathers’ autonomous-accepting parenting, self-evaluation, and the motivational, cognitive representation, and behavioural components of future orientation. Empirical estimates were carried out by LISREL on data collected from 458 (224 girls) Israeli Jewish adolescents (11th graders) regarding two prospective life domains: career and family. These estimates showed a good fit between the theoretical model and four domain-by-gender estimates (girls’ and boys’ career, and girls’ and boys’ family). Similar to recent findings, only few gender differences were found; particularly, girls scored higher on the motivational component applied to career (counter-hypothesis) and on all three components applied to prospective family. Discussion highlighted the pivotal functions of self-evaluation in linking between perceived parenting and the motivational component, and of the motivational component in linking between self-evaluation and the cognitive and behavioural components.

Adolescent passage to adulthood: Future orientation in the context of culture, age, and gender

Abstract The main objective of the present study has been to examine the future orientation constructed by transition to modernity adolescents in the context of age and gender. To that end we analyzed the hopes and fears for the future reported by Israeli Druze (N =276) and Jewish ( N =308) younger (9th graders) and older (12th graders) adolescents, as cases of transition to modernity and modern adolescents, respectively. The hypothesis predicting that Druze adolescents will invest less in the prospective life course domains (e.g., higher education, work and career) and more in the existential domains (e.g., self) was supported. The hypothesis postulating that across-age gender differences will be more stable in the Druze than in the Jewish group was not supported. Instead, interaction effects indicating that older females invested more in adult roles than younger females were found only for the Druze sample. Results were discussed in terms of the cultural, normative developmental, and political aspects of the Druze macrosystem and the motivational principle of least necessary expenditure ( Heckhausen, 1977 . Achievement motivation and its constructs: A cognitive model. Motivation and Emotion , 1, 283-329). It has been suggested that Druze adolescents employ this motivational principle to construct a culturally acceptable future orientation.

Adolescents' orientation toward the future: Sex role differentiation in a sociocultural context

The present study examines sociocultural variations of gender differences reflected in the future orientation of Israeli Jews and Arabs as cases of modernity vs. transition to modernity, respectively. One hundred and twelve Jewish adolescents (61 males and 51 females) and 116 Arab adolescents (67 males and 49 females), all high school seniors in a college-bound program, responded to an open-ended future orientation questionnaire and listed their hopes and fears for the future. These responses were categorized into eight life domains (school and matriculation, military service, higher education, work and career, marriage and family, self, others, collective issues) and each domain was analyzed in terms of salience (i.e., importance and interest, assessed by number of pertinent statements) and specificity (i.e., extent of detail and concreteness, rated on a 1–3 scale). Results supported the hopothesized instrumental-expressive division between Jewish males and females and the primacy of higher education for Arab females. Analysis employing U. Bronfenbrenners (The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979) ecological model of development suggests that these gender differences are sustained by the developmental settings of Jewish and Arab adolescents.

Defensive Pessimism and Optimism Correlates of Adolescent Future Orientation: A Domain-Specific Analysis

This study examined the links between academic and social defensive pessimism and optimism strategies and adolescents’future orientation in two prospective domains: education and military service. Analyses of data collected from Israeli 11th graders indicated (a) the prediction concerning domain specificity was corroborated so that academic strategies were significantly linked to prospective education components, and social strategies to prospective military service components and (b) investment in prospective life-course domains was linked to adolescents’employment of optimistic rather than defensive pessimism strategies. Findings emphasize the optimism underpinning future orientation and the need to distinguish between short-term and long-term effects of defensive pessimism on performance and psychological well-being. It was suggested that defensive pessimism may be positively associated with future orientation are both prospectively directed. Defensive pessimism may facilitate short-term planning and task performance but hinder the motivation to invest in the construction of long-range future orientation.

Adolescent control beliefs : cross-cultural variations of primary and secondary orientations

This article reports of two studies addressing the meaning of primary and secondary control beliefs for transition to modernity and modern adolescents. Study 1 participants (N = 365) were Malaysian (transition to modernity), and German and North American (modern) adolescents. Study 2 participants (N = 757) were Israeli Druze (transition to modernity) and Israeli Jewish (modern) adolescents. The control beliefs scales employed in the two studies drew from the primary-secondary control beliefs conceptualisation (Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982), shared a similar Likert-type item structure, but differed in operationalisation. Analyses tested two hypotheses: (1) the value mediation hypothesis postulated that transition to modernity adolescents will score higher on secondary control beliefs and modern adolescents will score higher on primary control beliefs; (2) the double transition hypothesis postulated that transition to modernity adolescents will score higher on both primary and secondary control beliefs. Results supported these hypotheses only partly. However, they did show clearly that transition to modernity adolescents endorsed secondary control beliefs more strongly than did modem adolescents. The discussion focuses on possible explanations of inconsistent results. It also suggests that future research should address two issues brought to light: the adaptive value of primary and secondary control beliefs; and the explanatory value of different control types. Both should be studied in historical, developmental, and cultural contexts.

Adolescents' Future Orientation in Time and Place: The Case of the Israeli Kibbutz

This study examined the effect of changing social circumstances on adolescents’ future orientation. Focusing on the recent kibbutz crisis, the future orientation of two cohorts of kibbutz and urban boys and girls (N 438) who were high school seniors in 1984 and 1992 was analysed. Results partly supported cohort, gender, and cohort by setting effects in adolescents’ future orientation, indicating that: (1) the 1992 cohort invested more in constructing prospective domains pertaining to adulthood (work and career, marriage and family) and less in military service; (2) the tendency of Israeli adolescents to construe a sex-typed future orientation was stable over time; and (3) that the 1992 kibbutz cohort increased its investment in work and career more than did the 1992 urban cohort. Results were explained in terms of the adaptability of adolescent future orientation to changing social circumstances, and in terms of Heckhausen’s (1977) principle of least necessary expenditure.

Future orientation, identity and intimacy: Their relations in emerging adulthood

This study examined the relationships between future orientation and identity and intimacy among Israeli emerging adults. Future orientation was defined in terms of behavioural (exploration, commitment) and motivational variables (value, expectance, and control) as they apply to two domains representing major adult tasks: career and family. Results showed that both career and family future orientation variables were related to identity and intimacy, with greater differences between the exploration and commitment links to identity and intimacy than among the motivational variables links to identity and intimacy. Specifically, although identity and intimacy were intercorrelated, commitment was related to identity and exploration was related to intimacy, while value and expectance (i.e., confidence about materialization of hopes and plans) were related to both. However, by controlling for the effect of identity, a negative relationship between commitment to career and intimacy was unmasked.