leadership. It was essential to verify the relations between the expressions at scientific level, to group them according to their meaning and relevance, and to reduce to a manageable number. Finally, the identification and structuring of the essential military value- and virtue-describing terms led to the definition of the core values and virtues reflecting the military culture.
In summary, there is increasing recognition that values and virtues are positive characteristics of soldiers and important regarding military leadership, training, and education. At the same time, there is limited empirical conclusion as to which values and virtues characterize a military organization (Soeters, Poponete, & Page, 2006). The research within this thesis referred to the Swiss Armed Forces and extended the current general understanding of military values and virtues. The overall scope focused on identifying the relevant expressions of military values and virtues by means of a psycholexical approach and on assessing the structure concerning the military core values and virtues of the Swiss Armed Forces.
The thesis is divided into a Pre-study and three empirical parts, aiming at (a) the psycholexical-based identification of the Swiss military values and virtues and at establishing a corresponding catalog; (b) assessing the factorial structure of military values and virtues; (c) analyzing the relationship to measures ←35 | 36→of universal values, Big Five personality traits and factors of character strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004); and (d) exploring the criterion validity of the identified military value and virtue factors with regards to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB; defined by Organ, 1997, as the willingness to do more than what is normally demanded) and motivation to lead (MTL; defined by Chan & Drasgow, 2001, as the person’s efforts to assume leadership training, roles, and responsibilities).
Figure 1 provides an overview of the Pre-study and the three empirical studies.
Fig. 1: Summary of the Pre-study and the three studies within the Swiss Armed Forces
As overviewed in Fig. 1, the selection of the value and virtue descriptors in the Pre-study was conducted in three stages, i.e., (a) psycholexical search of existing military documentation, (b) consultation of military psychologists, and (c) interviews with high ranking military commanders of the Swiss Armed Forces. This approach delivered a valid and comprehensive list of 25 military value- and 42 virtue-descriptive terms, called the MVVC. The catalog was used to assess military values and virtues in the subsequent three empirical studies.
In Study I, a sample of Swiss career officers and career NCOs was tested to capture the factor structure of military values. The objective was to make the MVVC and its corresponding items subject to a factor analytic analysis, and to conclude on the core values in the Swiss Armed Forces. Given the fact that a military organization reflects a specific culture, it was of interest to evaluate how the military value factors correlate with universal values and Big Five personality traits. This added verification as to how the outcome of the military value factors compare with the universal factorial structure (De Raad & Van Oudenhoven, 2008, 2011).
Study II applied a similar approach as Study I, focusing on the structure of military virtues to be assessed in a large group of Swiss officer candidates. Additionally, the aim of Study II was to assess how the military virtues relate to the five factors of character strengths as measured by the VIA-IS (Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2005).
As a result of the factor analytic analysis in Study I and II, the number of 25 military values and 42 virtues was reduced to five military value factors and four virtue factors8. To sum up, the prime aim of assessing the structure of military values (Study I) and of military virtues (Study II) was to facilitate a deeper understanding of the nature of the military culture.
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Study III concerned the question whether the military value and military virtue factors exhibit criterion validity with regards to OCB and MTL. OCB and MTL were confirmed to be crucial concepts for a successful selection of Swiss military officers (Annen, Goldammer, & Szvircsev Tresch, 2015). Furthermore, previous research has shown that values and virtues relate to a person’s motivation to accept a leadership role (Clemmons & Fields, 2011) and to display OCB (Halbesleben, Bolino, Bowler, & Turnley, 2010).
Overall, the thesis contributed to research regarding the impact of military values and virtues on training, leadership, and organizational structure within the Swiss Armed Forces. The special focus lay on the identification of the factorial structure of Swiss military values and virtues by means of a psycholexical and factor analytic approach.
This dissertation is composed of a theoretical background, three chapters of results which concerns the factorial structure of military values and virtues, ←37 | 38→and a general discussion. The first section includes an introduction to positive psychology, referring to Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) concept of character strengths and the corresponding application of this theoretical framework to the traditional framework of military psychology. The subsequent section addresses the philosophical notion as well as the psychological approaches to universal values and virtues, the corresponding measurement instruments, and the research assessing the related factorial structure. Further studies describing values and virtues in the military context are highlighted in the following chapter including the emphasis in relevance within the Swiss Armed Forces. Next, the research questions as well as the specific aspects of the methodology and procedure are discussed. The subsequent three chapters describe the three studies that were conducted within the scope of this doctoral dissertation. The thesis ends with a general discussion highlighting key findings, outlining added value and limitations, and addressing implications for practice and extended research.
2 Positive psychology and how it applies to military psychology
First, an introduction is given to the science of positive psychology with specific reference to the notion of good character, to which positive characteristics such as values and virtues are linked. Second, the emerging field of positive military psychology is addressed and empirical evidence on the benefits of good character in the military setting is summarized.
2.1 The scientific framework of positive psychology
As mentioned above, values and virtues are assumed to be morally good and desirable characteristics of personality (De Raad & Van Oudenhoven, 2008), and therefore are an integral part of the overall positive psychological concept. Positive psychology is an umbrella term for theories and research about what makes life most worth living (Peterson & Park, 2003; Seligman, 2002). A preference for the scientific approach has emerged to systematically study positive characteristics, positive emotions, and positive institutions. During the first half of the 20th century, psychology pursued the following three distinct aims: “curing mental illness, making the lives of all people more productive and fulfilling, and identifying and nurturing high talent” (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 6). After the Second World War, the field of psychological research had reduced its scope to only one of these missions, specifically curing mental illness. For the subsequent years, psychology was dominated by a disease model of human behavior (Seligman, 2000). The focus was now largely on
