Life Orientation among Palestinians

Abstract

Life orientation (Lo) is an inter-disciplinary topic that is embedded in various disciplines of social science, education, arts, and humanities. Over the past decades, scholars and researchers have shown increased interest in Lo as a multi-dimensional phenomenon. The concept of Lo refers to the study of self in relation to others and to society. It is the personal, social, intellectual, emotional, and physical growth and development of people and the way in which these dimensions relate to each other and express themselves in everyday life (Prinsloo, 2007). Historically, Antonovsky’s (1979) perspective regarding < is largely determined by a single psychological factor, which is the general attitude towards the world and one’s own life. According to Louw et al. (2012), Lo explains how people feel, how they behave and cope with stress, and how they keep healthy; and to make sense of the world, a person with LO prefers classified, categorized, and structured information. Recently, Scheier and Carver (1985) constructed the basic characteristics of future expectancies in LO test. However, assuming that optimism is a one-dimensional construct, some research found support for the bi-dimensionality of optimism and pessimism (Chang et al., 1997).