Personal Characteristics and Social Identity as Predictors of Risk Taking among Military Officers: An Empirical Study

摘要

This study explores the relation between personal characteristics and social influence in a decision-making situation at three Norwegian military academies and the Police Academy (N=128). In a given training situation in wintertime, officers were given an offer, not an order, of either jumping or not jumping into the ocean. About 69% of the officers decided to jump. A logistic regression analysis revealed that personal characteristics explained 29.5% of the variance in behavior. Adding a sum score of the cadets' verbal references to social relations in this situation explained an additional 33% of the variance, increasing the total explained variance to 62.5%. The variation on this variable itself estimated the probability of jumping in the .31 to .93 range. The results indicate that social identity amongst operative officers explains behavior over and beyond personal identity in a decision-making situation.