Expression of Symbols and Their Message of Peace and Conflict in Identity Drawing Map (IDM):Arab and Jewish Students

In 2008, we conducted a large scale study following our methodology developed for the analysis of drawings to assess identity (Hertz-Lazarowitz, Farah, & Yosef-Meitav, 2012). We gathered interviews and asked for drawing Identity Drawing Map from 184 students aged from 20 30 years. The symbols in the drawings were grouped in 5 categories: religious, national, emotional, secular-cultural and nature and person figure symbols. The most frequent symbols were related to the nature and person figure category, and the least frequent were symbols from the secular-cultural category. The symbol categories with most indicative of identity conflicts were religious and national. The Arabs had more conflicted and complex IDM messages than Jews and the evaluation of their emotions were less positive and less optimistic than the Jews. The IDM methodology revealed the complex and multi-layered expression of identity construction. These findings can provide better understanding into the mechanism of identity construction in a society and the University context which has been conflict ridden for many decades.