Israeli Manners

Yom Kippur, (the day of atonement in which Jews around the world will ask their friends and family members for forgiveness for trespasses they have committed in the past year) will take on special meaning this year for Israelis, who will have statistics reinforcing their need for forgiveness.

For the first time ever, the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies (JIMS) conducted a survey to find out which groups among Israelis are the most polite. 992 adult Israelis were interviewed, and asked an array of questions concerning cell phone usage, profane language usage, as well as treatment of senior citizens. Respondents were asked to record their behavior and were ranked on a scale form 0-4 based upon their answers. The average score was 2.94.

The survey found that Men are less polite than women. New immigrants were found to be more polite than native born Israelis. The most polite group was the Ultra-Orthodox with an average score of 3.16. No correlation was found tying politeness to education, marriage, or number of children.

According to Professor Robert Sauer, President of JIMS “The results of the survey are important because it suggests that the public education system in Israel is making a series of disastrous mistakes. The survey shows that there is no correlation between education and politeness, indicating that focusing almost exclusively on improving grades and cognitive skills, does not at the same time succeed in improving non-cognitive skills such as manners, self-control, and persistence. And since the survey shows that income substantially increases with politeness, Israeli employers highly value these non-cognitive skills. In other words, the Israeli education system would do well to switch tracks and devote much more attention to fostering politeness and other non-cognitive skills among the student population.”

JIMS also asked respondents where they encountered impolite behavior the most. JIMS compared the results to a similar survey that had been conducted in the United States. The survey reported that most people encountered rude behavior in shopping centers with a 31 percentile. Second most rude were people at airports and at work with 13 percentile. Lastly, 9 percent encountered rude behavior in their own close environment. Though the percentages were either the same or lower than the US statistics, when it came to rudeness encountered when interacting with government agencies only 19 percent of Americans reported negative encounters compared to 28 percent of Israelis.

The two most common forms of indecency occurred by 78 percent of Israelis experiencing loud talking on cell or public phones and 71 percent experiencing aggressive or inconsiderate drivers while on road.

The research found by Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies as reported by the Israel National News seems on the level as a legitimate and unbiased source. After a brief period of research I found that the University of Pennsylvania awarded JIMS placement in a 2009 study naming the world’s most influential think tanks.  Though the article does not address who exactly was polled I cannot imagine that JIMS would sample anything but a fair portion of the Israeli populous.

Author, Elad Benari, shows a neat discipline in reporting the straight facts of the survey without twisting the poll’s statistics to meet any personal agenda. I found that his article was fair and balanced throughout it’s entirety. At no point in the article did I find any excess information or tangents unrelated to the main point of the article. His treatment of the information in relation to information collected in the US was interesting and kept on an even keel by displaying that both Israeli and US residents had differing strong points of polite behavior in their respective cultures.