Second Year Report: Psychological Analyses of Courageous Performance in MilitaryPersonnel

摘要

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.