Investigating the attitude of martyr’s and self-sacrifice’s children toward the sacrificial performance of their fathers

Introduction

In Iran, the imposed war is one of the greatest and most important events in the history of contemporary changes, it has lasted for eight years and it has created a lot of studying corners among thinkers, authorities and researchers of different fields.

Considering that in Islam, attention to martyrdom and self-sacrifice in the form of jihad for God is one the divine acts and values, the procedure of holy resistance for imposed war was due to the link between Islamic thoughts and present conditions which in turn revived the role of culture and religious elements in the public culture.

 With the end of war and domination of peace and quiet atmosphere, we can observe a change in values and attitudes, especially among the new generation who has never seen and experienced the war. Every generation, in every period reviews the past, considering the condition in which the live in, and this view is the result of the formation of a historic look and a particular understanding of the past. This is due to the difference between the mental and colloquial categories of peace and war or crisis, because the persuasive-epical procedure of war is replaced by the historic procedure.

Among this, the self-sacrifice’s children are an important part of the war’s second generation, who according to their personal and family characteristics, normally have understandings and attitudes towards their fathers performance and behavior. The current study investigates the attitudes of martyr’s and self-sacrifice’s children toward the sacrificial performance of their fathers to seek the amount of awareness, belief and mentality of these children ,as those who are somehow involved in the remained issues and harms of that time, and to interpret and clarify it. In fact, these attitudes are influenced by the changed atmosphere of piece. So the problematic aspect of the issue is revealed to clarify the future directions of this excavation and to explain the degree of success of the involved and responsible organizations in transferring the values and customs of past to the new generation. Of course, we should regard that at present, the martyr’s children cannot have the same performance as their fathers, so we investigate their attitudes toward their father in other dimensions.

The concept of attitude and its dimensions

The term “attitude” has numerous Persian equivalents such as: opinion, viewpoint, reaction, frame of mind, stance, approach, perspective, but at present the term “attitude” is commonly accepted and is defined in different ways. Alport, Krech, Grutchfield, Jacobson, Lambert, Sears, Robert and many other authors have given some definitions that among them Lambert’s definition is more comprehensive of all: “attitude is a pretty fixed approach in thinking, feeling, and behaving people, groups and social issues or, more extensively, any event in someone’s environment” (Lambert, 1988; Kaviani,1380).

 Robert believes that in the field of attitude’s dimensions and features: all psychologists are of the same opinion about the A.B.C pattern that is, the Affective & Behavioral & Cognitive dimensions (Robert, 1988). Affective features refer to positive or negative excitements and Behavioral features refer to a special way of someone’s reaction and particular interpretations (Kaviani: 116).

Social psychologist usually explore “attitude” according to its formed features as follows:

1. The cognitive feature or beliefs, impressions, awareness or information acquired from someone (believing the goodness or badness of a phenomenon).

2. The affective feature or feelings and affections about a person, a thought, an event or an object (the creation of the state of fear, affection, disgust…)

3. The behavioral feature or plan and readiness to act.

It is clear that these features do not exist separately and do not perform independently. Attitude is a combination or a compound picture of feelings, perceptions and behavioral inclinations of a person about an object, a person, a group, an event, a thought or other similar circumstances (Mohseni, 1379:19).

In social studies, a lot of attention has been paid to attitude because researchers think that it is related to behaviour. Attitude is a hidden mental structure in one’s personality and we can describe it as a special mental readiness of a person in facing phenomenon, problems, events and the appearance of reactions with their associated excitements. People’s attitude is due to their past and their different life experiences. Like personality growth, famous people  or those people having special situations in one’s life (such as parents, friends, members of social and professional groups and …) have a great influence on the formation of attitude (Hellriegel, 1989:48 , as cited in Mohseni,1379:19)  .

Attitude has different characteristics and its main characteristics are:

1.      It is a theoretical concept because it is not directly observable and it cannot be measured quantitatively and to make it quantifiable we need to quantify its features.

2.      It is acquired and is completed gradually, because it is influenced by training and experience.

3.      It is pretty fixed, because it is a system and it has different aspects and changing it is not easy.

4.      It belongs to a person or group, since in many situations our attitude results from group situations.

5.      It has cognitive, affective and behavioural features so that each of these features can be either conscious or unconscious.

6.      It has main and minor characteristics, for example our attitude toward our job, our family life and our beliefs (main attitudes) is deeper than our attitude toward the educational grade of our neighbour’s children (minor attitude).

7.      The features of every attitude-either main or minor- interact with each other.  “there is no rational behaviour that doesn’t have affective elements as its motive and conversely we cannot observe emotional states except that understanding which forms its cognitive structure  intervenes with them”(Dadsetan, 1374:39).

8.      The features of every attitude are congruent in terms of their level. Usually when the cognitive dimension of an attitude is deep and stubby and depends on one’s personal values, the affective dimension is with the same proportion firm and stubby and therefore one’s mental readiness for suitable behaviour is more. In reverse, when the cognitive dimension of attitude is based on rumour, the affective or motivated dimension and one’s mental readiness for behaviour is very vague and probable.

9.      Main attitudes have a very important role in people’s lives and through the observation of behaviour; the analysis of thoughts is easily realizable. It worth noting that main attitudes of our life are chromatic and our minor attitudes are pale. The minor attitude may be so pale that we don’t notice it and even we may not be aware of it.

10.   Main attitudes have internal effects on minor attitudes, they are more internal and they are less dependent on external situations and conditions. But the more minor attitudes are minor the more they are dependent on environmental conditions. For example, faith in God is one of the main attitudes of a faithful person. Attitude toward justice and humanity is somehow more minor and one’s attitude toward job and family life is more minor and finally attitude toward the color of a car is the most minor. The more the distance between main and minor attitude the less will be its influence (Kaviani, 1380:120-122).

In discussing the attitude’s genesis factors, we can generally divide it to two types of cognitive and motivational. Factors such as: classical conditioning, action conditioning, observation and simulation and social comparisons are cognitive and factors such as: needs, culture, group belongings, one’s personality and…are motivational attitudes (the same source: 123).

The concept of attitude toward father’s sacrificial performance

As it was said “attitude is a fixed system including a cognitive element, an affective element and a behavioral element. The cognitive element consists of one’s beliefs about an object or a thought. The emotional or affective element is the one that usually has emotional relationship with our beliefs and behavioral element refers to the readiness to react in a special way (Karimi, 1373: 217).

In fact, by investigating “the attitude of children toward their father’s sacrificial performance” we mean the amount of sophisticated understanding from war atmosphere and the acceptance of sacrificial performance considering changes in society from that time to now. On the basis of this, we have used three main variables to evaluate this concept:

1.     The amount of readiness for sacrificial performance: an extent of readiness in which the person not only has accepted the sacrificial culture and performance but also has accepted its tool voluntarily, that is the martyred act and captivity and devotion.

2.     The amount of knowledge toward sacrificial performance: it is a systemized knowledge and understanding that a person has toward his father according to the changes that have taken place.

3.     The amount of feeling toward the sacrificial performance: it is a kind of belief and feeling of being simultaneously with self-sacrifices that is the amount of feeling proud about their father’s performance.

Methodology

This study has been conducted by using a survey method and it is indisputable .The statistical community of this study includes all the self-sacrifice’s children all over the country in 1385-86 (students from different schools and universities who were martyr, tolerant and devotee’s children) and their number was 79812.  By using the Cochran formula the volume of the sample has been estimated to be 1901 and they were chosen by using multistage sampling. So among all country provinces, four of them including Tehran, Lorestan, Razavi khorasan, and Khuzestan were selected as a sample of provinces either involved in war or away from war atmosphere. In this study, face validity was considered and also the Crounbakh’s α test was used for the reliability of the concept of attitude toward the sacrificial performance. The result of reliability estimate calculations shows that considering the amount of the acquired alpha coefficient (Alpha= 0.77), the internal homogeneity coefficient of the concept’s dimensions is in the acceptable level.

Results

1)      Personal characteristics of the participants

Among the 1901 martyr and self-sacrifice’s children participating in this study, 57.1 percent were female and 42.9 percent were male. In terms of their age groups, 33.8 percent of them were between 14 to 15 years old, 19.5percentbetween 16to 17 years old , 12.3 percent between 18 to 19 years old , 15.2 percent between 20 to 21 years old and 19.2 percent were 22 or more years old. Among these children 58.3 percent (1109) were high school students and in contrast 41.7 percent (792) were students of different universities. According to the studies done, among the four provinces, 35.8 percent of the participants were from Tehran province or city, 13.6 percent from Khuzestan province, 19.8 percent from Razavi Khorasan province, 14.5 percent from Lorestan province and 12.6 percent are from other provinces.

Among the participants , in all 16.2 percent are from Shahed university,4.7 percent from Allameh Tabatabayi university,4.8 from Lorestan university, 4.7 percent from Shahid Chamran university in Ahvaz, 7.2 percent from Ferdousi university in Mashhad, 1.6 percent from Tarbiat Modarres university,1.6 percent from Science and Technology university, 10 percent of them are high school students in Khorram Abad, 12   percent are high school students in Mashhad, 9.8 percent are students of Ahvaz, and 26.7 percent are the students of Tehran high schools.

Considering the sacrificial characteristics, the results show that 36.2 percent of the sample are martyr’s children, 39.6 percent are devotee’s children, 5.2 percent are tolerant’s children  and19 percents are tolerant devotee’s children. On one hand, the average of their fathers’ presence at the front is 40 months, the average of devotion percentage is 50 percent, and the average of captivity period is 5 years and on average it is 16.5 years from the time of their fathers’ martyrdom.

2)      The state of attitude toward their fathers sacrificial performance

2-1) the amount of readiness for sacrificial performance

In this study, we have used three indices to evaluate the amount of readiness for the sacrificial performance. In this stage, after expressing hope about not happening war again, the participants were asked to answer this question “If war happens in our country, to what extent you are ready to protect the religion and country?”

-         I’m ready to martyr and sacrifice myself ( martyrdom spirit)

-         I’m ready to devote myself ( devotion spirit)

-         I’m ready to suffer the problems and pains of captivity (captivity acceptance spirit)

A)    Martydom spirit: the results found show that among the martyr and self-sacrifice children 56.7 percent completely agree and 15.7 percent agree. In all, 72.4 percent of them are ready to be martyred if war happens. In contrast 9.4 percent completely disagree and 5.3 percent disagree and finally it can be said that 14.7 percent expressed no special attitude about that and 13 percent said that they are to some extent ready.  

B)     Devotion spirit: About 47.7 percent of the participants completely agree with the expression that “I’m ready to devote myself” and 15.2 percent agree and their total includes 61.9 percent of the participants. In contrast 13 percent completely disagree and 8.6 percent disagree, although 15.3 percent said that they agree to some extent.

C)    Captivity spirit: 39.6 percent of the participants completely agree with the statement that “if war happens, I’m ready to suffer the problems and pains of captivity” and 15.3 percent agree, 14.8 percent said that they agree to some extent and 8.4 percent disagree and 21.9 percent completely disagree.

Table 1: Distribution of participants according to readiness for the sacrificial performance          

2-2 The amount of knowledge to the sacrificial performance

About this, three main indices were designed to evaluate the amount of understanding and perception of martyr and self-sacrifice’s children about the sacrificial performance. The findings of the study are as follows:

A)    Having intuition about continuing their fathers’ way: In this case, we used “I don’t know whether to continue my father’s way or not?” and the final results show that 44.3 percent of the participants completely disagree and 11.4 percent disagree and in contrast 16.5 percent completely agree and 9.6 percent agree.

B)     Having intuition about their fathers performance: About 45.1 percent of the participants completely disagree and 11.4 percent disagree in answering to the question that “Do most of the time I think about why my father became martyr or devotee or tolerant in the war?”

C)    Having intuition about going to front:  In this case, the participants were asked to express their degree of agreement about this statement “if I was in the war time, I wouldn’t go to the front”. The results show that 62.7 percent completely disagree and 12.2 percent disagree. In contrast, 8.9 and 6.1 percent, respectively, completely agree and disagree with this statement. So in all, 74.9 percent of the children said that if they were in the war time and holy defence, they would go to the front.

Table 2: Distribution of participants according to their degree of knowledge about the sacrificial performance

2-3) the amount of feeling toward the sacrificial performance

In this case, for studying and evaluating the amount of coaction to their father’s performance, we used three indices:

A)    Being proud of their father’s performance: 82.5 percent of the participants completely agree and 7.2 percent of them agree with the statement that “I am proud of my father’s sacrificial and martyrdom performance”. In other words 89.7 percent of the self-sacrifice’s and martyr’s children are proud of their father’s performance and it is a high percent. In contrast 10 percent are only to some extent proud.

B)     Similarity to father’s performance: 70.5 percent of the martyr and self-sacrifice’s children confirmed the statement that “I like to be similar to my father” and they believed this similarity. In contrast less than 10 percent have stated that they have no tendency.

C)    The honour of being a martyr or sacrifice: about this the statement of “in war, martyrdom and self-sacrifice was a great honour that all people couldn’t get it” was used. The results show that 74.6 percent completely agree and 9.1 percent agree and only 4.5 percent completely disagree and 4.1 percent disagree.

Table 3: distribution of participants according to their amount of feeling about the sacrificial performance

At last, by combining the mentioned indices the resulted investigation shows that in all, 40.3 percent and 32.8 percent of the martyr and self-sacrifice’s children respectively have very positive and positive attitudes toward the sacrifici8al performance and in contrast 1.8 and 56.9 percent of them have positive attitude at a very low and low level.

Table 4: the distribution of participants according to the attitude toward the sacrificial performance

2-3) The relationship between gender and the sacrificial performance

Using the suitable statistical test for comparing the attitude of martyr and self- sacrifice children according to the participants’ gender, it can be concluded that in the dimension of “the amount of readiness for the sacrificial performance” the average of male participants was 22.14 and the average of female participants was 20.64 . Also the findings show a meaningful relationship between these two variables. In other words it can be said that the boys have meaningfully more readiness for the sacrificial performance in the society. In the other hand, other results show that there is no significant difference in terms of the amount of knowledge and feeling of the girls and boys toward the sacrificial performance.

Table 5: the results of the statistical test of the relationship between the attitude toward the sacrificial performance and gender

2-4) the relationship between the educational level and the attitude toward the sacrificial performance

The studies done, reveals that in the two dimension of the amount of readiness and knowledge about the sacrificial performance the high school students have meaningfully acquired higher scores in comparison to university students. In the dimension of the amount of readiness for the sacrificial performance the mean of university students’ scores was 19.97, while for high school students it was 21.33 and in the case of “the amount of feeling about the sacrificial performance” the mean of university students’ scores was 25.92 and for high school students it was 36.7.

In contrast, in the case of he dimension of “the amount of knowledge about the sacrificial performance the mean of university students scores was 21.56 and for high school students it was 21.24. The other findings show a meaningful relationship about this. In other words, it can be said that university students have significantly more knowledge about the sacrificial performance in comparison to high school students.

Table 6: the results of statistical test of the attitude toward the sacrificial performance according to the educational level

Discussion and Conclusion

Discussing the definition of the sacrificial performance, we can define it as the behavioral intentions which have the religious (theism), personal and social origins and results in actions such as: martyrdom, self-sacrifice and captivity. These behaviors are formed and became meaningful by the society atmosphere and the people who have performed them and they gradually change into religious and social values. So, the sacrificial performance as a rational action inclined to a value has been stabilized and posited in the public culture of society during the 8 years of holy resistance.

In all, the resulted findings of the performed studies show that in the case of the children’s attitude toward the sacrificial performance the mean of martyrdom spirit among the participants was 7.76, the mean of self-sacrifice spirit was 7.13, and the mean of captivity acceptance was 6.41. In fact, the martyrdom spirit, was the greatest kind of readiness that if war happens in our country, the martyr’s and self-sacrifice’s children will appear to do.

Also, the results show that in the case of the children’s feeling of proud about the sacrificial performance of their fathers 82.5 percent agreed very much and 22.3 percent agreed very little (with the total mean of 9.15 from 10), about the resemblance to their father’s performance 70.6 percent agreed very much, and 5.5 percent agreed very little (with the mean of 8.5) and in the case of feeling of proud about the martyrdom and self-sacrifice 76.4 percent agreed very much and 14.5 percent agreed very little (with the mean of 8.7).

The other studies about the feeling of children about the sacrificial performance show that about the question of “I finally don’t know whether to continue my father’s way or not?” 16.5 percent completely agreed and 44.3 percent completely disagreed (with the mean of 6.7) and about the “hesitation in the reason for their father’s martyrdom, self-sacrifice and tolerance” 21.7 percent completely agreed and 45.1 percent completely disagreed (with the mean of 6.7) and about going to the front at the war time 62.7 percent agreed very much and 8.9 percent agreed very little (with the mean of 8).

Examining the state of participant’s attitude according to their personal characteristics shows that the amount of readiness for the sacrificial performance among boys is more than girls. University students have more knowledge of the sacrificial performance than high school students. In contrast the amount of readiness and feeling of high school students about the sacrificial performance is more than university students.

The other findings show that in different dimensions self-sacrifice’s children have more positive attitudes in comparison to martyr’s children. Also, the state of the participants’ attitudes in Khuzestan and Lorestan provinces is meaningfully more positive than Tehran and Razavi Khorasan provinces. So, it can be seen that although in different dimensions, there is a positive attitude among martyr’s and self-sacrifice’s children but from the pathological dimension, the state of attitudes differs according to the personal and family characteristics.

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