Religious Affiliation and Ethnic Identity
An exploration of ethnic identity among Jewish Israeli high school pupils suggested the relevance of religious observance to ethnic identity (Hofman, 1970). On the hypothesis that Arab identity could be similarly discriminated along lines of religious affiliation, a 25-scale semantic differential was constructed to rate ME, ARAB, ISRAELI ARAB, LEBANESE MOSLEM, AND LEBANESE CHRISTIAN. Twelve Christian and 25 Moslem boys in a Nazareth 11th grade dass rated the five concepts in random order on the 25 scales. D-matrices of interconcept distances (Ds) were separately generated for Christians and Moslems by computing Ds over adjective scale means. Table 1 shows that Ds in both matrices define almost perfect simplexes, with values smallest near the diagonals and in creasing in any direction (Gutunan, 1954). The resultant hierarchy of stereotypes is one of increasing distance from ME (self). The farther a concept is from the self, the less "identification" with it. These Moslem and Christian boys clearly differ in their constructions. Christians identify more with LEBANESE CHRISTIAN, a religious notion, than with ARAB, a national one. Moslems, however, place ARAB dosest to ME. The position of ARAB in both matrices, in fact, suggests that to be an Arab means first of all to be a Moslem. Arab nationalism may well leave Christians at the periphery. The convergence of semantic differential and order analysis of the Guttman rype encourages extension of this kind of exploration, and work with larger samples of stereotypes and respondents is now in progress.