The Context of Military Environments An Agenda for Basic Research on Social and Organizational Factors Relevant to Small Units (2014) / Chapter Skim
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2 Norms in Military Environments
2 Norms in Military Environments
Pages 23-40
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• What social norms predict Army unit success? • How does the acute and chronic stress that many Army units expe rience influence the above?
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to suggest key basic research opportunities that have great potential to improve understanding of real soldiers operating in real military environments. The perspectives on norms research offered in this section introduce the complexity of the study of norms.
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; in these cases, descriptive norms outweigh injunctive norms. While this generic understanding of social norms is relatively undisputed, theoretical explanations concerning their importance, as well as how they operate, remain controversial topics (see Keizer et al., 2008, for an example of a study of behavioral effects when descriptive and injunctive norms are in conflict)
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. In this case, compliance with social norms can be analyzed in terms of the formal game theory construct called a "repeated prisoner's dilemma." A second mechanism is the internalization of norms (i.e., self-discipline)
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Decision Making as a Dual Process Both to explain deviant behavior and to suggest research avenues for correcting or preventing such behavior, it is useful to review a commonly invoked framework from cognitive psychology for how people make decisions as a dual process (see, for example, Epstein, 1990; Evans, 2007, 2008, 2010; Kahneman and Frederick, 2005; Sloman, 1996; Stanovich, 1999; Chaiken and Trope, 1999)
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. For example, in a study examining the role of dual process in moral decision making, cognitive load was shown to interfere with utilitarian moral judgment, leading subjects to make less deliberative and more emotion-based moral judgments (Greene et al., 2008)
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The advantage of the gist of social norms, if they are sufficiently strongly ingrained, is that they can guide behavior without invoking System 2 in cases where System 2 is compromised. Creating such strong norms in a military situation requires extensive learning from training, such as the training soldiers receive on the Seven Core Army Values (loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage)
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For example, moving from all-male combat units to units that include men and women influences norms soldiers may resent or resist. In this instance, a wide range of previously normative behavior might be affected.
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Although more research needs to be done in this area within military environments, the laboratory-based norms research suggests that norms in small units are not always the product of formal leadership processes. In game theory and experimental studies of norms, metanorms are defined as mechanisms associated with the enforcement of norms (Axelrod, 1986)
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Although killing is an extreme example, other deviant behaviors may emerge as a function of shifting norms. In this way, systematic norms research in the context of small military units can make important contributions to the understanding of conditional factors and qualities of norms.
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Expanding research on battlefield crime to emphasize unit behavior ".
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All Army personnel are expected to uphold the Seven Core Army Values; therefore, in novel situations these values are supposed to guide norm assessments negotiated among group members. The group determines how behaviors associated with a task are to be accomplished in ways that conform to its core values.
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. Here the committee emphasizes again, as noted in the report's first recommendation, that the most effective way to research norms within Army units is to conduct research activities with active duty Army personnel.
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. Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behavior.
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. Cognitive load selectively interferes with utilitarian moral judgment.
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. Local social norms and military sexual stressors: Do senior officers' norms matter?
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NORMS IN MILITARY ENVIRONMENTS 39 Wong, K (2014, January 10)
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