Value changes during war: coping with direct and indirect threats.

Background and objectives: This two-wave longitudinal study examines changes in personal values during war, investigating mean changes and the impact of situational and socio-demographic variables on values' change.

Design: The study is based on the theory of human values (Schwartz, 2017).

Methods: The measurements were conducted several weeks before Hamas's invasion of Israel in October 2023, and eight months later, during the war in Gaza. Jewish Israelis, aged 18-35 years, participated in the study (n = 600).

Results: The importance of self-direction-action and achievement values decreased, and the importance of power-dominance and security-social values increased during the war. For all values, a higher pre-war level of a value was associated with a smaller change in this value during the war. A stronger threat to oneself during the war was associated with larger increases in power-dominance and humility values and larger decreases in universalism-care values. People who perceived a stronger threat to close others showed a smaller decrease in self-direction-action and a larger decrease in security-personal values.

Conclusions: The study enhances our understanding of coping with war threats by examining changes in the individual's motivational system.