Search

The commitment of soldiers to the military is essential because it could lead to increased morale, motivation and retention. Despite the accumulation of knowledge about predictors of organizational commitment (OC), efforts to investigate environmental factors influencing OC are in their infancy. We note that individuals shape their attitudes toward the environment based on information obtained from their surroundings, and we investigate peer effects on OC using data from a natural experiment of randomly-assigned military academy roommates. A total of 400 cadets (Sex ratio: 93.5% male, Age: 21.13 $ \pm $ ± 1.43 years) from 136 living quarters participated in this quantitative study. In both self- and roommate-reports, we found that the average affective commitment (AC), continuance commitment (CC), and normative commitment (NC) of roommates in a living quarter can still predict AC, CC, and NC of the remaining individual in that same living quarter, respectively, even after controlling for the personal predictors of that remaining individual. Additionally, in self-report, we discovered that when there is a high heterogeneity in AC among roommates within a living quarter, the AC of the remaining individual in that living quarter tends to be higher, even after controlling for the personal predictors of that remaining individual. These findings provide initial evidence that attempting to assign soldiers with low OC to the same living quarters as those with high OC may be worthwhile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although growth writing has been verified to be effective in addressing psychological maladjustment through sequential shifts in emotion-processing strategies, there have been no further findings extending these preliminary observations to applications in the military field. This study aimed to investigate whether growth writing can serve as a novel intervention in enhancing the mental health of cadets. A total of 103 cadets (Sex ratio: 68.9% male, Age: 20.60 $ \pm $ ± 2.16 years) participated in an 8-week writing program and were randomly assigned to either the growth writing group or the unstructured writing group. The growth writing group wrote structured narratives on the themes of exposure, devaluation, and benefit-finding for 30 minutes per week, focusing on the most stressful event in cadet lives. The unstructured writing group freely wrote about their feelings and thoughts regarding the most stressful event in cadet lives for 30 minutes every week. We found that growth writing resulted in greater benefits compared to unstructured writing, as indicated by a more significant reduction in stress, depression, anxiety, and anger, as well as a stronger increase in life satisfaction at the five-week follow-up. Moreover, significant changes were observed in stress, depression, anxiety, anger, and life satisfaction over the three assessment points among cadets in the growth writing group. Overall, the current findings highlight that the growth writing process can serve as a valuable form of self-psychotherapy for cadets who will face challenging battlefields in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]