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Conflict, fear and social identity in N agaland
Author(s) -
Zagefka Hanna,
Jamir Limabenla
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
asian journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.5
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-839X
pISSN - 1367-2223
DOI - 10.1111/ajsp.12076
Subject(s) - psychosocial , psychology , social psychology , structural equation modeling , social identity theory , social conflict , identification (biology) , life satisfaction , politics , clinical psychology , social group , psychiatry , political science , statistics , mathematics , law , botany , biology
This survey study tested the effects of exposure to ethnopolitical conflict and violence and social group identification on psychosocial well‐being among a sample of N agas ( n = 280). Nagaland is located in N orth e ast I ndia, and for decades has suffered from armed conflict and political instability. It was predicted that reported exposure to conflict would be positively associated with reported levels of fear, which in turn would decrease psychosocial well‐being (assessed with the indices life satisfaction, self‐esteem and general health). It was also expected that strongly identifying with being N aga would be positively related to perceived levels of social support, which in turn were predicted to be positively related to well‐being. Last but not least, it was hypothesized that conflict and fear would also directly and negatively impact on levels of identification with being N aga: increased conflict‐induced fear was expected to reduce the strength of the group identification. These predictions were confirmed by structural equation modelling.