Societal resilience in countries during human-made conflicts

Societal resilience reflects the capacity of varied societies to withstand, absorb, cope with and adjust to varied types of threats, both environmental and human-made. The past few months have highlighted the need for different countries to cope with crises that result from either internal conflicts (such as the ongoing war in the Tigray area in Ethiopia) or between countries (such as the war in Ukraine, which impacts not only Ukraine and Russia, but a much wider circle of countries, due to the energy crisis, shortage of wheat, inflation and rising prices of products, and more). As the overall aim is to strengthen the capacity of all populations to build and maintain effective levels of resilience, it is interesting to investigate commonalities and diversities in the coping of different societies with conflicts.

Thus, we compared the societal resilience of samples from Ukraine (N=1000) during the current war with Russia (data collected during June 2022) with findings collected in Israel (N=650) during an eruption of the ongoing conflict with the Hamas in Gaza (data collected amid fighting during May 2021). The findings presented that the societal resilience of the Ukrainian population is significantly higher than that of the Israeli population (4.35 versus 3.89 respectively, on a scale from 1 to 6). Similarly, the level of hope was significantly higher among the Ukrainian sample compared to the Israeli sample (3.95 versus 3.5, on a scale from 1 to 5). In contrast, the perceived well-being of the Israeli sample was significantly higher compared to that of the Ukrainian sample (4.41 and 3.56 respectively, on a scale of 1 to 6). As could be expected, the sense of danger was significantly higher among the Ukrainian sample compared to that of the Israeli sample (3.70 versus 2.45, respectively, on a scale of 1 to 5).

What can be learned and what may be potential explanations for these findings? A major lesson learned is that societies may display high levels of stress, a sense of danger, and perceived threats, and simultaneously high levels of hope for a better future and societal resilience.

Learn more about the research