Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1974, Vol. 30, No. 1, 24-30 CHILDREN'S PSYCHOLOGICAL REACTIONS TO WARTIME STRESS * AVNER ZIV ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI 2 Tel-Aviv University, Bar-Han University, Israel Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel SHMUEL SHULMAN Bar-Han University, Ramat-Gan, Israel This research studied the psychological reactions of children in Israeli settle- ments subjected to frequent artillery shellings in the period following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It was found that the shelled children exhibited greater degree of locale patriotism, greater degree of covert aggression, and greater appreciation for the personality trait of courage than did the nonshelled con- trols. No differences between the shelled and the nonshelled groups emerged with respect to attitudes toward the war, desire for peace, and overt aggres- siveness toward the enemy. The findings above were interpreted as reflecting an active process of coping with stress in children of the shelled settlements. Furthermore, the specific modes of coping seemed to be partly affected by the prevailing social norms. This study deals with children's psycho- logical reactions to war-fostered artillery shellings of their physical surroundings. Its subjects were children in Israeli towns sub- jected to frequent shellings from across the border in the period following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Children's behavior under wartime stresses has been studied extensively during World War II (e.g., Bordman, 1944; Brander, 1943; Despert, 1942; Freud & Bur- lingham, 1942; Solomon, 1942). In all re- searches of this period, the interest cen- tered around questions of clinical interest, in particular, ones regarding the scope and the nature of pathological symptoms occurring under war-induced stressful circumstances such as air raids, bombardments, etc. Practi- cally all of the reports concluded that chronic behavioral disturbances following air raids were rare. For the most part, symptoms of acute anxiety that did appear could be traced to the excitement and emotional upset dis- played by the child's parents and other sig- nificant adults in his vicinity (Janis, 1951). While the World War II researches above do point to the children's relative resilience 1 This research was supported by Special Grant in Aid 8445000 from the Israel Ministry of Educa- tion to the first and second authors. 2 Requests for reprints should be sent to Arie W. Kruglanski, Department of Psychology, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, Tel-Aviv, Israel. under conditions which might appear as ex- tremely stressful to an observer, little is known about the processes mediating their reactions to these circumstances. In an at- tempt to understand the rarity of stress- induced disturbances, it may be argued that wartime shelling as such is not perceived as stressful by the children, possibly because of their inability to fully comprehend the extremely negative possible consequences of such occurrences. This line of reasoning might have some merit with very young children, almost totally dependent on the adults for interpreting the significance of events within their environments. It appears much less plausible in reference to more ma- ture children (e.g., from grade school on- ward), better capable of appreciating the severe damage to themselves and their close ones inherent in the shellings. It is reason- able to suppose that for these more mature children, success in fending off severe be- havioral pathologies is related to an active coping process involving the different levels of psychological functioning. The research reported here attempted to identify the pos- sible implications of coping with stress on some aspects of grade school children's cog- nitions, affect, and behavior. It is worth noting that the present research differs from the World War II studies, re- ferred to earlier, in two important respects: 24