Social and Psychological Underpinning of the Bar-Tal and Antebi’s Concept of General Siege Mentality within Different Ethnic Groups
The aim of this research was to find out (1) whether social alienation, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), and primary psychopathy are significant predictors of Daniel Bar-Tal & Dikla Antebi’s concept of general siege mentality (GSM), and (2) whether the components of the path model are invariant across different ethnic groups. The survey was carried out on the adult population in the region of eastern Croatia where live Croats and Serbian ethnic minority, and in the northern region of Serbia where live the members of Croatian ethnic minority (The Province of Vojvodina). The convenience and purposive sample consisted of 1431 full aged participants. Multiple-group analysis of structural invariance was used to test whether differences observed in the structural parameters across different ethnic groups are statistically significant. All path estimates were significant, in the expected direction and indicated much similarity in structural relationships across different ethnic groups. It might be concluded that social alienation, right-wing authoritarianism, and primary psychopathy had expressed the causal effects on emerging general siege mentality across different ethnic groups. The structural paths for different ethnic groups can be considered identical if Chi-square does not reveal a statistically significant difference between unconstrained and constrained models. It was found out that difference in path estimates for different ethnic groups had not been significant, which means that constrained multiple group model was accepted. Results showed that ethnic belongings did not significantly moderate relations between variables. About 36% of the variance of general siege mentality was explained by social alienation, right-wing authoritarianism, and primary psychopathy for the full sample in the accepted constrained model. There is an evidence that a more complex and severe political-psychological disorder is underpinning the Bar-Tal & Antebi’s concept of general siege
