RESEARCH PAPER
Personality predicting military morale and the role of positive and negative affectivity
| 1 | Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia |
| 2 | Estonian Military Academy, Tartu, Estonia |
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Submission date: 2022-01-31
Final revision date: 2022-08-11
Acceptance date: 2022-10-25
Online publication date: 2023-01-05
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
Background:
Military morale is defined as the enthusiasm and persistence with which a member of the group engages in the pre-scribed activities of that group and is considered to be closely related to performance. The current study uses the conceptualization of military morale through the elements of work engagement and burnout. Nevertheless, our per-sonality traits, and how we interpret or react to our environment, including group atmosphere, may also be related to perception of morale alongside positive and negative affectivity. The article investigates the relations between per-ceptions of morale, personality traits (the Big Five) and positive or negative affectivity in a military context.
Participants and procedure:
A sample of Estonian military conscripts (N = 354) from the soldiers’ basic military training course responded to the questionnaire. Three measures were used for data collection: a short personality questionnaire (40 items) for Big Five personality traits; the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; 20 items) for state affectivity (both positive and negative); and a 16-item instrument for military morale (8 items for both work engagement and burnout). Struc-tural equation modelling was used to evaluate relationships between study variables.
Results:
The results indicated that openness to experience and agreeableness did not have a significant effect on military morale (as work engagement and burnout) either directly or indirectly (through affectivity). However, conscien-tiousness was found to have a significant effect on military morale and extraversion indirectly through positive affec-tivity. Positive and negative affectivity as the mediators strengthened the relations between personality traits and military morale.
Conclusions:
The results emphasize the reinforcing power of positive emotions to enhance high morale.
Military morale is defined as the enthusiasm and persistence with which a member of the group engages in the pre-scribed activities of that group and is considered to be closely related to performance. The current study uses the conceptualization of military morale through the elements of work engagement and burnout. Nevertheless, our per-sonality traits, and how we interpret or react to our environment, including group atmosphere, may also be related to perception of morale alongside positive and negative affectivity. The article investigates the relations between per-ceptions of morale, personality traits (the Big Five) and positive or negative affectivity in a military context.
Participants and procedure:
A sample of Estonian military conscripts (N = 354) from the soldiers’ basic military training course responded to the questionnaire. Three measures were used for data collection: a short personality questionnaire (40 items) for Big Five personality traits; the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; 20 items) for state affectivity (both positive and negative); and a 16-item instrument for military morale (8 items for both work engagement and burnout). Struc-tural equation modelling was used to evaluate relationships between study variables.
Results:
The results indicated that openness to experience and agreeableness did not have a significant effect on military morale (as work engagement and burnout) either directly or indirectly (through affectivity). However, conscien-tiousness was found to have a significant effect on military morale and extraversion indirectly through positive affec-tivity. Positive and negative affectivity as the mediators strengthened the relations between personality traits and military morale.
Conclusions:
The results emphasize the reinforcing power of positive emotions to enhance high morale.
REFERENCES (55)
1.
Akhtar, R., Boustani, L., Tsivrikos, D., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2015). The engageable personality: Per-sonality and trait EI as predictors of work engagement. Personality and Individual Differences, 73, 44–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid....
2.
Alarcon, G., Eschleman, K. J., & Bowling, N. A. (2009). Relationships between personality variables and burnout: a meta-analysis. Work & Stress, 23, 244–263. https://doi.org/10.1080/026783....
3.
Allik, J., & Realo, A. (1997). Emotional experience and its relation to the Five-Factor model in Estonia. Jour-nal of Personality, 65, 625–647. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467....
4.
Britt, T. W., & Dickinson, J. M. (2006). Morale during military operations: a positive psychology approach. In T. W. Britt, C. A. Castro, & A. B. Adler (Eds.), Military life: The psychology of serving in peace and combat. Volume 1: Military performance (pp. 157–184). Praeger Security International. https://doi.org/10.5860/choice....
5.
Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. (2003). Optimism. In S. J. Lopez & C. R. Snyder (Eds.), Positive psychological as-sessment: a handbook of models and measures (pp. 75–89). American Psychological Association.
6.
Christian, M. S., Garza, A. S., & Slaughter, J. E. (2011). Work engagement: a quantitative review and test of its relations with task and contextual performance. Personnel Psychology, 64, 89–136. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744....
7.
Clark, L. A., & Watson, D. (1999). Temperament: a new paradigm for trait psychology. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 399–423). Guilford Press.
8.
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1995). Domains and facets: Hierarchical personality assessment using the re-vised NEO personality inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 64, 21–50. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327....
9.
Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Four ways five factors are basic. Personality and Individual Differ-ences, 13, 653–665. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8....
10.
Demerouti, E., & Cropanzano, R. (2010). From thought to action: Employee work engagement and job per-formance. In A. B. Bakker & M. Leiter (Eds.), Work engagement: The essential in theory and research (pp. 147–163). Psychology Press.
11.
DeNeve, K. M., & Cooper, H. (1998). The happy personality: a meta-analysis of 137 personality traits and subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 197–229. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2....
12.
Eaton, R. J., & Bradley, G. L. (2008). The role of gender and negative affectivity in stressor appraisal and cop-ing selection. International Journal of Stress Management, 15, 94–115. https://doi.org/10.1037/1072-5....
13.
Furr, R. M., & Bacharach, V. R. (2014). Psychometrics: an introduction (2nd ed.). Sage.
14.
González-Romá, V., Schaufeli, W. B., Bakker, A. B., & Lloret, S. (2006). Burnout and work engagement: Inde-pendent factors or opposite poles? Journal of Vocational Behavior, 68, 165–174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.....
15.
Gottlieb, T., & Gøtzsche-Astrup, O. (2020). Personality and work-related outcomes through the prism of socioanalytic theory: a review of meta-analyses. Nordic Psychology, 72, 346–362. https://doi.org/10.1080/190122....
16.
Gray, E. K., & Watson, D. (2002). General and specific traits of personality and their relation to sleep and academic performance. Journal of Personality, 70, 177–206. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6....
17.
Hayes, N., & Joseph, S. (2003). Big 5 correlates of three measures of subjective well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 34, 723–727. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0191-....
18.
Inceoglu, I., & Warr, P. (2011). Personality and work engagement. Journal of Personnel Psychology, 10, 177–181. https://doi.org/10.1027/1866-5....
19.
Ivey, G. (2014). How’s morale? What is morale? In G. Ivey, K. Sudom, W. H. Dean, & M. Tremblay (Eds.), The human dimensions of operations: a personnel research perspective (pp. 1–24). Canadian Defence Academy Press.
20.
John, O. P., Naumann, L. P., & Soto, C. J. (2008). Paradigm shift to the integrative Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and conceptual issues. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (3rd ed., pp. 114–158). The Guilford Press.
21.
Kahn, J. H., Schneider, K. T., Jenkins-Henkelman, T. M., & Moyle, L. L. (2006). Emotional social support and job burn-out among high-school teachers: Is it all due to dispositional affectivity? Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27, 793–807. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.39....
22.
Kaplan, S., Bradley, J. C., Luchman, J. N., & Haynes, D. (2009). On the role of positive and negative affectivity in job performance: a meta-analytic investigation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 162–176. https://doi.org/10.1037/a00131....
23.
Kim, H. J., Shin, K. H., & Swanger, N. (2009). Burnout and engagement: a comparative analysis using Big Five personality dimensions. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 28, 96–104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm....
24.
Kim, H. J., Shin, K. H., & Umbreit, T. (2007). Hotel job burnout: The role of personality characteristics. Inter-national Journal of Hospitality Management, 26, 421–434. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm....
25.
Langelaan, S., Bakker, A. B., Van Doornen, L. J. P., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2006). Burnout and work engagement: Do individual differences make a difference? Personality and Individual Differences, 40, 521–532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid....
26.
Lucas, E. R., & Diener, E. (2009). Personality and subjective well-being. In E. Diener (Ed.), The Science of well-being. Social indicators research series (Vol. 37, pp. 75–102). Springer.
27.
Manning, F. J. (1991). Morale, cohesion and esprit de corps. In D. A. Mangelsdorff & R. Gal (Eds.), Handbook of military psychology (pp. 451–470). John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
28.
Marsh, H. W., Wen, Z., & Hau, K. T. (2004). Structural equation models of latent interactions: Evaluation of alternative estimation strategies and indicator construction. Psychological Methods, 9, 275–300. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-9....
29.
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (1997). The truth about burnout: How organizations cause personal stress and what to do about it. Jossey-Bass.
30.
Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 397–422. https://doi.org/10.1146/annure....
31.
McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. (2008). The five-factor theory of personality. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 159–181). The Guilford Press.
32.
Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (2008). Toward a unified theory of personality. Integrating dispositions and pro-cessing dynamics within the cognitive-affective processing system. In O. P. John, R. W. Robins, & L. A. Pervin (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 208–241). The Guilford Press.
33.
Naragon, K., & Watson, D. (2009). Positive affectivity. In S. J. Lopez (Ed.), The encyclopedia of positive psy-chology (pp. 707–711). Wiley-Blackwell.
34.
Parmak, M. (2010). Morale and ethnicity in the military: Psychological coping with conscription in the Estoni-an Defence Forces. Retrieved from https://icds.ee/en/icds-occasi....
35.
Parmak, M., Mylle, J. J. C., & Konstabel, K. (2013). The soldiers’ personality questionnaire: Validation of a short five-factor model instrument for the Estonian military [Unpublished manuscript].
36.
Peterson, C., Park, N., & Sweeney, P. J. (2008). Group well-being: Morale from a positive psychology per-spective. Applied Psychology, 57, 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464....
37.
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Lee, J. Y., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2003). Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 879–903. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9....
38.
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2012). Sources of method bias in social science re-search and recommendations on how to control it. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 539–569. https://doi.org/10.1146/annure....
39.
Rogers, G. M., & Revelle, W. (1998). Personality, mood, and the evaluation of affective and neutral word pairs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1592–1605. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3....
40.
Schaufeli, W. B. (2016). Heavy work investment, personality and organizational climate. Journal of Manage-rial Psychology, 31, 1057–1073. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmp-07....
41.
Schaufeli, W. B., & Bakker, A. B. (2004). Utrecht Work Engagement Scale: Preliminary manual. Occupational Health Psychology Unit, Utrecht University.
42.
Schaufeli, W. B., & Bakker, A. B. (2010). Defining and measuring work engagement: Bringing clarity to the concept. In A. B. Bakker & M. Leiter (Eds.), Work engagement: a handbook of essential theory and research (pp. 10–24). Psychology Press.
43.
Schaufeli, W. B., Salanova, M., González-Romá, V., & Bakker, A. B. (2002). The measurement of engagement and burnout: a two sample confirmatory factor analytic approach. Journal of Happiness Studies, 3, 71−92. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015....
44.
Schwarz, A., Rizzuto, T., Carraher-Wolverton, C., Roldán, J. L., & Barrera-Barrera, R. (2017). Examining the impact and detection of the “urban legend” of common method bias. The Data Base for Advances in Infor-mation Systems, 48, 93–119. https://doi.org/10.1145/305147....
45.
Shockley, K. M., Ispas, D., Rossi, M. E., & Levine, E. L. (2012). A meta-analytic investigation of the relationship between state affect, discrete emotions, and job performance. Human Performance, 25, 377–411. https://doi.org/10.1080/089592....
46.
Sinclair, R. R., & Tucker, J. S. (2006). Stress-care: an integrated model of individual differences in soldier performance under stress. In T. W. Britt, C. A. Castro, & A. B. Adler (Eds.), Military life: The psychology of serving in peace and combat. Volume 1: Military performance (pp. 202–231). Praeger Security Interna-tional.
47.
Sulea, C., van Beek, I., Sarbescu, P., Virga, D., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2015). Engagement, boredom, and burnout among students: Basic need satisfaction matters more than personality traits. Learning and Individual Differences, 42, 132–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lind....
48.
Swider, B. W., & Zimmerman, R. D. (2010). Born to burnout: a meta-analytic path model of personality, job burnout, and work outcomes. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 76, 487–506. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.....
49.
van Boxmeer, F., Verwijs, C., de Bruin, R., Duel, J., & Euwema, M. (2007). A direct measure of morale in the Netherlands’ armed forces morale survey: Theoretical puzzle, empirical testing and validation. Paper pre-sented at the 49th International Military Testing Association Annual Conference, Gold Coast, Australia.
50.
Watson, D., & Clark, L. A. (1992). On traits and temperament: General and specific factors of emotional ex-perience and their relation to the five-factor model. Journal of Personality, 60, 441–476. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467....
51.
Watson, D., & Clark, L. A. (1994). The PANAS-X: Manual for the positive and negative affect schedule – ex-panded form. University of Iowa. https://doi.org/10.17077/48vt-....
52.
Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063–1070. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3....
53.
Watson, D., & Naragon, K. (2009). Positive affectivity: The disposition to experience positive emotional states. In S. J. Lopez & C. R. Snyder (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of positive psychology (2nd ed., pp. 207–215). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxford....
54.
Williams, L. J., & McGonagle, A. K. (2016). Four research designs and a comprehensive analysis strategy for investigating common method variance with self-report measures using latent variables. Journal of Busi-ness Psychology, 31, 339–359. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869....
55.
Woods, S. A., & Sofat, J. A. (2013). Personality and engagement at work: The mediating role of psychological meaningfulness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 44, 2203–2210. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.1....
Copyright: © Institute of Psychology, University of Gdansk This is an Open Access journal, all articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
RELATED ARTICLE
We process personal data collected when visiting the website. The function of obtaining information about users and their behavior is carried out by voluntarily entered information in forms and saving cookies in end devices. Data, including cookies, are used to provide services, improve the user experience and to analyze the traffic in accordance with the Privacy policy. Data are also collected and processed by Google Analytics tool (more).
You can change cookies settings in your browser. Restricted use of cookies in the browser configuration may affect some functionalities of the website.
You can change cookies settings in your browser. Restricted use of cookies in the browser configuration may affect some functionalities of the website.