Resiliency to adversity in military personnel: The role of self-regulation

ABSTRACT

Military service can include numerous adverse events. As such, resiliency has been considered as a means of potentially helping active-duty personnel face adversity and be better prepared for the demands of military service. However, research in military contexts has been hindered by use of disparate conceptualizations, definitions, and measures of resiliency. To provide some resolution to these inconsistencies, we use a comprehensive, theoretically based model of resiliency to explore how self-regulation processes contributed to Soldiers’ negative affect and self-perceived effectiveness. We hypothesized that self-regulation (comprising distinct affective, behavioral, and cognitive processes) increments prediction of Soldiers’ outcomes over and above trait-based resiliency protective factors. Using a sample of active-duty military personnel, cognitive self-regulation and affective self-regulation incremented the prediction of negative affect and self-perceived Soldier effectiveness, respectively, over and above trait-based protective factors. These results support the use of a comprehensive model and measure of resiliency, which may enable greater consistency across future research endeavors. As these results validated the links between self-regulation and post-adversity outcomes, this study provides a basis for developing new resiliency training programs. Additional implications for theory and continued research on resiliency in military contexts are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Resiliency
• self-regulation
• negative affect
• self-perceived Soldier effectiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada [Grant R2192A12]; and the Army Research Institute (ARI) for the Behavioral and Social Sciences [BAA W911NF-13-R-0001], awarded to M.G. Rothstein (co-PI). SSHRC and ARI had no involvement in the conduct of this research or preparation of this manuscript.