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This study aimed at examining the adjustment of students with learning disabilities (LD) and at exploring the mediating role of hope. By means of a multidimensional approach, the interactions between risk and protective factors emerging from internal and external resources among 856 high school students (10th to 12th grades) were analyzed. A total of 529 typically achieving students and 327 students with LD attending general education classes in seven high schools completed seven instruments measuring sense of coherence, basic psychological needs, loneliness, family climate, hope, academic self-efficacy, and effort. The students’ achievements in English, history, and mathematics were collected. The analysis used structural equation modeling, and the results emphasized the significant role of hope as a mediator between risk and protective factors and academic self-efficacy and its significance for students with and without LD in explaining achievements and effort investment.

This chapter presents and discusses theoretical considerations and empirical findings regarding the concepts generalized resistance resources (GRRs) and generalized resistance deficits (GRDs). Recent research findings are presented, showing how these resources or deficits impact sense of coherence (SOC). Suggestions for future research directions (e.g., individuals’ differential susceptibility to environmental effects and eudaimonia/hedonia perspectives) and interventional implications are presented.

Given the central role of anger in shaping adversarial policy preferences in the context of intergroup conflict, its reduction may promote conflict resolution. In the current work, we drew on psycholinguistic research on the role of language in generating emotions to explore a novel, extremely subtle means of intervention. Specifically, we hypothesized that phrasing conflict-relevant policies in noun form (vs. verb form) would reduce anger and impact policy support correspondingly. Results across three experimental studies in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict supported these expectations for both support for concessions (Studies 1-3) and retaliatory policies (Study 3), with reduction in anger mediating the salutary impact of noun form (vs. verb form) on policy support. These results expand our understanding of the influence of language on emotions and policies in the context of conflict and have applied relevance for conflict-resolution efforts.

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In this chapter on salutogenesis and sense of coherence (SOC) in families and children, the authors deal with the contributions of children’s environments to the adjustment of children with typical development, and the development of children with special needs. The authors report on their comprehensive literature review covering 20 years of research and 44 studies from 15 countries, including children from infants and toddlers through preschool to school-aged children up to 12 years of age.

The current research examined whether for a message that is based on the paradoxical thinking principles—i.e., providing extreme, exaggerated, or even absurd views, that are congruent with the held views of the message recipients—to be effective, it needs to hit a ‘sweet spot’ and lead to a contrast effect. That is, it moderates the view of the message's recipients. In the framework of attitudes toward African refugees and asylum seekers in Israel by Israeli Jews, we found that compared to more moderate messages, an extreme, but not too extreme, message was effective in leading to unfreezing for high morally convicted recipients. The very extreme message similarly led to high levels of surprise and identity threat as the extreme message that was found to be effective. However, it was so extreme and absurd that it was rejected automatically. This was manifested in high levels of disagreement compared to all other messages, rendering it less effective compared to the extreme, paradoxical thinking, message. We discuss these findings’ practical and theoretical implications for the paradoxical thinking conceptual framework as an attitude change intervention, and for social judgment theory.