Modeling the Indirect Association of Combat Exposure With Anger and Aggression During Combat Deployment: The Moderating Role of Perceived Unit Morale

Dyches, Karmon D.; Saboe, Kristin N.; Anderson, James A.; Wilk, Joshua E.; Hinman, Sarah; Sipos, Maurice L.; Quartana, Phillip J.

doi:10.1037/mil0000165

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Instead, most studies of soldiers’ combat stressors gather retrospective measures after soldiers return home (e.g., Currie et al, 2011; Mitchell et al, 2011) or opt for a pre- and post-deployment strategy (e.g., Contractor et al, 2017; Franz et al, 2013). A few studies, however, obtained data at one time during deployment (e.g., Dyches et al, 2017; Schaubroeck et al, 2011; Taylor et al, 2014), sometimes including a follow-up after they returned home (Vinokur et al, 2011). Each study tended to have one or more serious problems, however, including the effects of recall bias (e.g., memory loss/reconstruction due to over-reliance on long-term memory after deployment is over), the uncontrolled possibility of reverse-causation, and the loose definition of combat situations (e.g., being deployed to a wide combat region but being a member of an air force ground crew that never saw actual combat).…”

Section: Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

News from the front: A monthly study on stress and social support during a military deployment to a war zone.

Ragsdale¹,

Kochert²,

Beehr³

2021

Journal of Occupational Health Psychology

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Soldiers deployed to combat zones are likely to experience some stressful situations that can result in individual strains or ill health. In addition to the stressors originating in situ, problems at home can also affect soldiers' strains and attitudes about deployment. However, they may also possess resources in the form of social support from both their comrades and family that, based on resources theories of occupational stress, can lessen strains or enhance attitudes. A serious problem in examining this issue is the difficulty of studying their occupational stress, because collecting data in their work situation-a combat zone-is inherently complicated. Most studies rely on past recollection of the deployment situation in postdeployment data collections, with some studies including a pre-deployment measure or one data collection during deployment. The present study was the first to collect data from soldiers periodically (monthly) over the course of their entire deployment to a combat zone, which has the advantage of providing more accurate tracking of stressor and resource effects on both their strains and positive deployment attitudes closer to real time. This monthly diary study found that, consistent with resource theories of occupational stress, the previous month's combat stressors had a detrimental effect on many outcomes, and the resource of social support from work and home during the previous month improved physical health and depression, respectively. Future research should not only replicate this approach to data collection but also extend the measurement periods to examine soldiers' readjustment process after returning home.

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Section: Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

News from the front: A monthly study on stress and social support during a military deployment to a war zone.

Ragsdale¹,

Kochert²,

Beehr³

2021

Journal of Occupational Health Psychology

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“…Preliminary further analyses of anger data in this combat-deployed cohort show that the trajectory of anger symptoms mirrors the trajectories of PTSD symptoms and is likely predicted by the same factors that drive posttraumatic stress symptom recruitment over time, namely, lifetime trauma history and combat exposures on deployment. A number of studies have found that this association between combat exposure and anger (Adler et al, 2011;Cabrera et al, 2016;Chemtob et al, 1997;Dyches et al, 2017;Gilam et al, 2017;Hoge et al, 2004;Killgore et al, 2008;MacManus et al, 2015;Rona et al, 2015) and lifetime trauma, particularly occurring in childhood, has been reliably associated with impairment to emotional regulation and threat detection systems (Marusak et al, 2015), both implicated in problematic anger and aggression. Importantly, it appears that the same or similar mechanisms may underpin these relationships, providing some explanation for the link between anger and PTSD.…”

Section: Mechanisms Underlying the Development Of Anger In Deployed P...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Anger in occupations characterized by repeated threat and stress exposure: The longitudinal view in the military context.

Lawrence‐Wood¹,

Hooff²,

McFarlane³

2021

Anger at Work: Prevention, Intervention, and Treatment in High-Risk Occupations.

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In military populations, there is evidence that levels of anger and aggression increase over time. They increase further during the process of leaving the full-time service environment in the period of transition to civilian life.• Expression and escalation of problematic anger and aggression over time may be compounded by aspects of military life, including a culture of authority and requirement to contain and respond to threat with action, and repeated and prolonged exposure to threatening environments.• Problematic anger and aggression are, in part, a symptomatic/ behavioral reflection of underlying priming and sensitization of neural networks associated with threat detection and activation of the sympathetic nervous system response. These processes are shared with the neurobiological underpinnings of posttraumatic stress disorder.

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“…Moreover, military morale has been shown to mitigate the effect of job-related stress on performance (Milgram et al 1989;). Furthermore, morale has been found to be negatively associated with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (Whitesell and Owens 2012;Dyches et al 2017). Therefore, it is important to explore how the personal factors of each individual member of an organization affect the overall level of organizational morale.…”

Section: Defining Military Moralementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although several previous studies have used a similar single-item approach (e.g. Whitesell and Owens 2012;Gal 1986;Gal and Manning 1987;Dyches et al 2017), we decided to use those variables separately as a construct of individual and collective types of morale and, additionally, aggregate all items together as one cumulative variable of direct military morale. The questionnaire used a five-point Likert scale from "strongly disagree (1)" to "strongly agree (5)".…”

Section: Measures Of Military Morale Personality and Socio-democratic Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Personality traits and select socio-demographic variables as predictors of military morale: longitudinal research in the Estonian defence forces

Kasemaa

Säälik

2021

Journal of Military Studies

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Military morale is a concept widely used to describe the motivational element of soldiers’ will to fight or “the energy that drives soldiers to perform qualitatively better in stressful conditions, characterised by enthusiasm and persistence when engaging in collective, i.e. unit-level activities”. This longitudinal study explored the interlink-ages between perceptions of military morale, the Big Five personality traits and select socio-demographic characteristics among the conscripts of the Estonian Defence Forces and predicting directly measurable individual and collective types of military morale. Moreover, the fluctuation of military morale over the training cycle of conscript service (11 months) was tracked. The findings indicate that at the start of military service, individual morale has a low or medium statistically significant correlation with conscripts’ personality traits, with Conscientiousness and Neuroticism demonstrating the strongest relations; however, the correlation with Neuroticism was negative. Additionally, when viewed throughout the course of the entire training cycle, the morale demonstrated a U-shaped progression, i.e. high at the beginning, dropping in the middle and rising back up at the end of military service. At the same time, socio-demographic variables demonstrated little or non-significant role in predicting individual or collective morale. The results indicate that morale fluctuates over time and is affected by personal characteristics. For practitioners, these results could help to reinforce the positive impact of morale on collective and individual performances.

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Modeling the Indirect Association of Combat Exposure With Anger and Aggression During Combat Deployment: The Moderating Role of Perceived Unit Morale

Cited by 7 publications

References 41 publications

News from the front: A monthly study on stress and social support during a military deployment to a war zone.

News from the front: A monthly study on stress and social support during a military deployment to a war zone.

Anger in occupations characterized by repeated threat and stress exposure: The longitudinal view in the military context.

Personality traits and select socio-demographic variables as predictors of military morale: longitudinal research in the Estonian defence forces

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