{PSOCIAL}

As stated, personality characteristics play a crucial part in shaping our perspective towards the people that surrounds us. A study conducted by Suejung Han and Carole Pistole (2017) examined the relation between personality traits, using the big five scales; a scale that measures the Big Five personality (i.e., Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Conscientiousness), and openness to diversity using Universal-Diverse Orientation –UDO. Their research identified a relationship between all five personality traits and UDO; Openness to Experience predicted appreciation of cultural diversity and values on diverse perspectives while Agreeableness predicted trust and care for culturally diverse individuals; the Extraversion showed general positivity toward diversity; the Neuroticism correlated with feeling threatened by diversity, as a negative contribution; and the Conscientiousness served as an ethnical motivation for openness to diversity (Han & Pistole,2017). These findings strengthen previous research that found that Openness to Experience consistently serves as a strong predictor of UDO and also lower prejudice (Sibley & Duckitt, 2008).

In addition to personality traits, in literature regarding prejudice towards out-group individuals it has been found that exposure to out-group members can in fact reduce feelings of threat. Many psychological approaches believe that if you can expose people to positive perceptions it will reduce prejudice (Birtel & Crisp, 2012). In the same way psychologists teach people to deal with different fears. It seems that if you expose in an honest way the positive and negative of each minority, the main group will be humbler towards the out-group; this gives a small initial "approval" to their fears when revealing not only the good of people, which provides a more comfortable atmosphere.

In addition, it has been found that anxiety is one of the main reasons of strong prejudice towards a minority; this causes a basic fear of meeting up, getting to know each other and in total, creates a bigger gap between the different groups. A reasonable thought is to believe that the feel of threat can grow from anxiety feelings. The best way to decrease fear will be to show that there's not much to be afraid of, therefore to expose the various groups to as many out-groups possible (Birtel & Crisp, 2012). Some evidence suggests that a “mere exposure” to the out-group might increase the likeliness of a person to express positive associations with members of said out-group (Zebrowitz, White, & Wieneke, 2008), yet it is not clear if such an effect is likely to happen in the specific context of Argentinian immigrants living in Israel towards people of Palestinian communities.

Although understanding the complexity of life in Israel, the many variables involved in the inter-group conflict, and why exposure is difficult in such context (Dugas et al., 2017), it involves looking at the history of both of the groups, the politics and life experiences and losses that become an obstacle in many people's mind. We seek to understand if exposure in a broader, more general way has any relation to the perception of threat of Palestinians for Argentinian Jewish immigrants.

A study conducted by Siebzehner (2011) estimated that approximately 64% of Latin American born immigrants living in Israel were originally from Argentina. That same study indicates that Israeli society perceives the Latin American immigrants in general, and Argentinian immigrants in particular, as motivated to immigrate to Israel based on expressive motivation over economical or social motivation (Siebzehner, 2011). This perception is countered by investigations that indicate that the motivation of Argentinian immigrants to move to Israel were often based on a variety of factors, more commonly related to their own economic situation and the political climate of their country of origin, as well as the factor of chain migrations (Klor, 2017).

A research conducted by Maoz and McCauley (2009) in the Hebrew university showed that feeling of threat amongst Israelis correlated negatively with being supportive of making concessions to Palestinians. They also showed that feelings of sympathy towards Palestinians correlated positively with willingness to compromise (Maoz & McCauely, 2009) and that readiness to apologize and make reparations exist on both sides (Klar & Schori-Eyal, 2014). This further shows the intertwined relation between perception of threat and psychological traits. Unfortunately, there has not been enough research to examine the perception of threat amongst Argentinian immigrants specifically. A research that was conducted to study the reception and integration of Argentinian immigrants in Israel, found out that most Argentinian immigrants to Israel in the 70s and 80s were not associated with Israel or Zionism and a minority were not Jews, as defined by religious criteria or even by broader criteria (Sznajder & Roniger, 2005). This finding provides a basis to believe that most Argentinians would have less perception of threat toward Palestinians due to lack of association with the Zionist movement. Drawing on that, a research that explores the effect of exposure and psychological traits would offer better understanding of the relationship between Palestinians and Argentinian immigrants in Israel. Finally, studying the variables related to inter-group conflicts of Argentinian immigrants to Israel might be of relevance to further understand phenomena such as subjective well-being, acculturation, and centrality of migratory events in Argentinian and Latin American immigrants living in Israel (Simkin, 2020).

This article proposes to evaluate the relationship between threat perception towards the out-group and intrinsic traits such as SDO, RWA and personality and to observe the general impact of extrinsic variable (time spent living in Israel) and threat perception towards the out-group.

The sample of this study is composed of 207 Argentinians who migrated to Israel and are currently living there. Of those 207, 108 are women and 99 are men (Men = 34.8%; Women = 65.2%). The ages of the individuals of the sample ranges from 20 to 81 years old (M= 52,06; S.D= 14.6).

A non-probabilistic sample was gathered through voluntary collaboration. The participants gave an informed consent, having been advised that participation would be anonymous and that the data gathered would be used strictly for scientific purposes

In order to carry out the statistical procedures EQS 6.4 and SPSS 25 or windows were used.

When assessing threat perception in relation to SDO and RWA, the results obtained show that individuals who uphold beliefs and attitudes based on social hierarchy and social dominance, respect towards authority, submission to the authorities and conventionalism, show a heightened perception regarding individuals outside of their social group. Both SDO and RWA seem to affect the perception of threat specifically because it targets the existential and epistemological motivations underlying those beliefs of social superiority and appreciation of the status quo (Jost, Glaser, Kruglansky & Sulloway, 2003). These attitudes might also be influenced by contextual contingencies such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and by stereotypes associated to the Palestinian community by the Israeli society. Further studies that focus on those variables are required in order to better comprehend the motivational and ideological basis related to the perception of threat toward Palestinians by the individuals and communities of Jewish Argentinian migrants living in Israel.

The results revealed a significant negative correlation between Agreeableness and threat perception as measured by the scale; that is, people who scored higher on the agreeableness scale were significantly less likely to have high threat perception. This finding is supported by previous research that showed that Agreeableness predicted trust and care towards individuals with diverse cultural backgrounds (Han & Pistole, 2017). This would explain the link between agreeableness and lower threat perception.

It was expected that the remaining of the Big Five personality traits, Extraversion, Openness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism would have a correlation with threat perception; Neuroticism was expected to correlate positively with the dependent variable while with the remaining, a negative correlation was expected. Contrary to the hypothesis and the literature in the field, there were no such significant correlations. This could indicate that the Argentinian immigrants in Israel, as a population, differ in their perception of threat and how they interpret it. It is possible that there are factors that play a part in determining whether a person or a group is perceived to impose a threat; those factors can be social and not precisely individual characteristics. Perhaps examining broader factors such as political views and drive to migration in the first place, would provide us with better understanding of threat perception among Argentinian immigrants in Israel.

The results show that there is no defined correlation between the perception of threat and the amount of years spent in Israel for Argentinian immigrants. This might indicate that threat perception is affected by more specific, context-sensitive variables related to exposure than by the amount of years an immigrant has spent living as part of the Israeli society. We recommend that further research evaluate other criteria such as day to day interactions (e.g working side by side), ethnic composition in the area that the immigrants live in, etc. We assume that analyzing the interaction of threat perception with these variables will help build a better understanding of the relationship between specific types of exposure to minorities and the assumption of threat towards Palestinians in Israel for Argentinian immigrants.

In regards to this study’s limitations, it should be mentioned that the results obtained are representative of the sample, but not applicable to the whole population since the sampling method used is not probabilistic and no measures to assure randomization of the sample were carried out. Furthermore the variable used to measure exposure is indicative of exposure in a very broad and general manner (year of migration/time spent living in Israel). Although it evaluates certain aspects of exposure, it doesn't necessarily imply direct contact with the out-group or include other aspects regarding exposure to the out-group.