Synopsis of Research Interests

My first research efforts centered on issues of social information processing in various contexts e.g., during the provision of help, or as part of processes of self evaluation. My publications during this period (1985 - 1990) reflect this focus.  During my post-doctoral stay at UC Berkeley, I became interested in the area of close relationships and especially in parents-children relationships and their effects on relationships in adulthood. In general I adopted the theory of attachment as a theoretical framework for understanding these processes. Thus, since 1988 I have been studying the manifestations of attachment dynamics of adults and children in various contexts (e.g., kibbutz) and in various close relations (e.g., parenting, romantic love, friendships), using diverse methodologies (interviews, self report measures, observations). This is a research area, which combines social and developmental psychology and my membership in various international organizations as well as the different journals in which I publish reflect this dual focus.

            During the past ten years I have focused on two interrelated areas. One, the special turning point of the transition from adolescence to adulthood in the Israeli context. I have studied this transition in relation to processes of identity formation, the military service and changes in the relationships between parents and adolescents. My second line of research  focuses on the caregiving/nurturing behavioral and motivational system. As part of this interest I have examined the experience of parenting (the prototypical manifestation of this motivational system), and in particular the development of various caregiving strategies, as revealed in parenting representations, which are based on one’s attachment relationships as a child.  To this end, together with Dr. Miri Scharf, I have developed the Parenting of Adolescents Interview, and have validated this interview vis-à-vis other measures of parenting behaviors and feelings as well as vis-à-vis the coping and socio-emotional development of the adolescent offspring. The interest in the general caregiving motivational system led me to examine other, less prototypical manifestations of this system. One such area is that of the transformational leader who is viewed as caring for his or her followers much like parents care for their children and whose role involves activation of the caregiving motivational system. This new and quite innovative approach which combines two disparate research paradigms resulted, so far in three major publications in collaboration with Dr. Micha Popper. In addition I have examined another interesting manifestation of the caregiving system - that of childhood role reversal, which reflects precocious and inversed manifestation of the caregiving behavioral system. 

        Combining the two lines of research and together with Dr. Miri Scharf I have conducted two large-scale research projects (one recently funded by the BSF) where we have examined changes in parents-adolescents relationships in Israel as the adolescents leave home and go to military service. Using the attachment perspective, and taking into account the special Israeli cultural context, we have developed a typology of caregiving strategies, which may explain the diverse paths parents and adolescents take as they undergo this transition point. These two research projects include in depth interviews and observations of hundreds of participants and involve longitudinal data collection across several years. As such they furnish very rich basis for insights about normative and less normative developmental paths of parents and emerging adults during the leaving-home transition in the Israeli context and will allow further validation of the caregiving typology.

        Currently I am interested in understanding the strong and encompassing motivation of caring for which parenting is viewed as a highly prototypical though not exclusive example.