Psychological Analyses of Courageous Performance in Military Personnel

Abstract

This research reports on the second year of the project to identify psychological markers of courageous military performance. Findings indicate that means and standard deviations of heartrate responses of 28 bomb disposal operators during a lab stress test are similar to patterns recorded for previous groups of operators. Individual profiles were constructed for each operator. Physiological and psychometric data for the operators are internally consistent, but weakly correlated with each other. Preliminary analyses indicate that, as expected, low anxiety and heartrate activity is associated with superior performance in the field. Moreover, decorated operators responded stably and without anxiety during pre-tour stress tests. Early results on optimism and courage form no clear pattern.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1990
Accession Number
ADA231563

Entities

People

  • S. Rachman

Organizations

  • University of British Columbia

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • British Columbia
  • Classification
  • Data Science
  • Explosive Ordnance Disposal
  • Heart Rate
  • Information Science
  • Laboratory Tests
  • Military Personnel
  • Military Research
  • Reactivities
  • Security
  • Social Sciences
  • Standards
  • Stress Tests
  • Technical Information Centers
  • Test And Evaluation

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Brain and Cognitive Science; Experimental Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Psychological Intervention/Treatment for Stress, Anxiety, PTSD, and Related Emotional and Cognitive Health Symptoms.