Prelims

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Occupational Stress and Well-Being in Military Contexts

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Research in Occupational Stress and Well-Being

Series Editors: Pamela L. Perrewé, Jonathon R. B. Halbesleben and Christopher C. Rosen

Recent Volumes:

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Research in Occupational Stress and Well-Being Volume 16

Occupational Stress and Well-Being in Military Contexts

EditED BY

Peter D. Harms

The University of Alabama, USA

Pamela L. Perrewé

Florida State University, USA

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2018

Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78756-184-7 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-183-0 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-185-4 (Epub)

ISSN: 1479-3555 (Series)

Contents

About the Authors

Thomas Bellairs is an active Duty Officer in the US Air Force. He earned his PhD in Management from the University of Alabama. His research interests include job crafting, employee well-being, stress management, and how employees view their future at work.

Tiffany Brutus is a Graduate Student of the Organizational Science and Leadership Concentration in the School of Strategic Leadership Studies at James Madison University. She is interested in exploring the roles of leadership and administration as it relates to the implementation of health education strategies, interventions, and programs.

Carl A. Castro is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans & Military Families at USC. His research focuses on assessing factors associated with soldier, family, and unit readiness, and evaluating the process of service members’ transitions from military to civilian life.

Rachel E. Frieder is an Assistant Professor of Management in University of North Florida’s Coggin College of Business. Her research interests involve how individuals get ahead at work with an emphasis on topics such as adaptive (e.g., political skill) and maladaptive individual differences (e.g., psychopathy), leadership, and work relationship quality.

Ethan W. Gossett received his Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he was a member of the Biobehavioral Pain Research Laboratory. His primary research interests include work hazards, emotional well-being, and pain as well as organizational outcomes associated with acute and chronic pain conditions.

Leslie B. Hammer is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Portland State University and a Professor in the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences at Oregon Health & Science University. Her work focuses on workplace programs that reduce work–life stress and evaluating the effectiveness of supervisor support training.

P. D. Harms is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Alabama. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His current research interests include the assessment and development of personality, psychological well-being, and leadership.

Sarah N. Haverly is a doctoral student of Applied Psychology at the Portland State University. Her research interests include occupational health psychology, self-conscious emotional processes, the unique experience of military service members, and interpersonal relationships as they impact, and are impacted by, workplace factors.

Jacob N. Hawkins is a Research Assistant for the Research Facilitation Laboratory. Jake graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he worked in research laboratories in evolutionary and developmental psychology. His research interests include mental health, positive psychology strategies, and resilience among children and adolescents.

Stacy Ann Hawkins received her PhD from Claremont Graduate University. She is currently a Behavioral Research Scientist and Family Resilience Division Chief at the Research Facilitation Laboratory. Her work has explored relationships and well-being among a wide variety of populations, including parents of infants, same-sex couples, and military families.

Sara Kintzle is an Associate Research Professor in the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans & Military Families. Kintzle’s research involves the experience of service members and veterans, including risk and protective factors related to successful military transition.

Karen Landay is a Doctoral Student in the Culverhouse College of Commerce at the University of Alabama. Her primary research interests include leadership and dark personality, the interaction of gender differences with dark personality, and the effects of music on outcomes such as training and development.

Matthew R. Leon is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Central Oklahoma. Leon has also worked as a Civilian Research Scientist across three different universities and as an Applications Analyst for the US Navy’s Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory and Naval Medicine Operational Training Center.

Paul B. Lester is an Officer in the US Army and serves as the Director of the Research Facilitation Laboratory in Monterey, CA. His research interests include resilience, psychological health, positive psychology, leadership, courage, and Big Data. He has served in the Army since 1991.

Maura J. Mills is an Assistant Professor of Management at the Culverhouse College of Commerce, University of Alabama. Her research focuses on the work–non-work interface, related gender considerations, and positive organizational behavior, including employee attitudes, well-being, and work engagement.

Holly K. Osburn is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Central Oklahoma. She received her PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the University of Oklahoma. Her primary areas of interest include leadership, planning, creativity, and business ethics.

Alycia L. Perez received her PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the University of Akron. Her research largely focuses on leadership, organizational well-being, employee positive functioning, and gender issues. Dr. Perez has been working in support of US Army Initiatives with the Research Facilitation Laboratory since 2012.

Kristin A. Sowden holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Secondary Education from the College of New Jersey and a Master’s degree in Education in Counseling Psychology from the James Madison University. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Strategic Leadership at James Madison University.

Leanne M. Tortez is an adjunct Faculty Member in the Organizational and Leadership Psychology Department at William James College, and recently worked as a Research Analyst for Northwell Health in Manhasset, New York. Her research interests include the work–family interface, leadership, community-based participatory research, and qualitative methods.

Adam J. Vanhove is an Assistant Professor in the School of Strategic Leadership Studies at the James Madison University. He received PhD in Industrial–Organizational Psychology from the Colorado State University. His research focuses on occupational health, resilience, and well-being.

Loryana L. Vie serves as the Senior Project Director of the Positive Soldier Health Project, a military-civilian collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania and the U.S. Army, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Principal Investigator: Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman). She received her PhD in Social and Personality Psychology from the University of California, Riverside. Her research interests include military health, individual differences in health and health behavior engagement, and quantitative methods for studying changes in health. Dr. Vie has worked with the Research Facilitation Laboratory since 2012.

Wylie H. Wan completed her PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan and conducted postdoctoral work at the Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences at Oregon Health & Science University. Her research focuses on close relationships, living and working environments, and health and well-being across the life course.

Kerry S. Whittaker is a member of the Research Facilitation Laboratory. She received her Doctorate in Medical Psychology from the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. Her research has focused on exploring the relationship between stress and other psychosocial factors in the etiology and progression of cardiovascular disease.

Pedro S. A. Wolf is a Behavioral Scientist at the Research Facilitation Laboratory. He earned a Doctorate Degree in Psychology from the University of Arizona. Before attending college, he served in the US Army as an Airborne Infantryman with the 75th Ranger Regiment.

Preface

In the 16th volume of Research in Occupational Stress and Well-Being, we have eight chapters that cover topics related to the causes, consequences, and experiences associated with stress and well-being of soldiers, veterans, and their family members. Our first three chapters cover topics related to the antecedents and processes related to the experiences of stress and post-traumatic stress disorder in military personnel and how research in this area can inform both the future military research and stress-related research in civilian settings. In the lead chapter, Matthew R. Leon, Holly K. Osburn, and Thomas Bellairs review research on the link between combat experiences and the development of post-traumatic stress, the factors that increase or decrease the likelihood of developing stress-related disorders, and how these processes compare to those of civilian war survivors. In the second chapter, Karen Landay and Rachel E. Frieder investigate how trait psychopathy may explain why certain individuals are attracted to professions wherein the likelihood of experiencing violence is more likely and how such characteristics may influence the manner in which such individuals cope with combat-related experiences. In the third chapter, a team from the US Army’s Research Facilitation Laboratory discusses current practices in terms of how the US Army measures and monitors mental health in soldiers and its link with performance metrics.

The theme of the second section concerns issues surrounding how the stress-related experiences of soldiers can influence those around them and how veterans cope with stress when their service ends. In the fourth chapter of this volume, Wylie H. Wan, Sarah N. Haverly, and Leslie B. Hammer use the life course perspective to examine the experiences of military couples across stress-inducing events such as relocations and deployments. In the fifth chapter, Maura J. Mills and Leanne M. Tortez review the literature surrounding military families with a focus on parenting issues and how the military family lifestyle can impact child’s well-being. The sixth chapter by Sara Kintzle and Carl A. Castro follows the theme of examining stressors outside and after life as a soldier by introducing the military transition theory and reviewing the literature surrounding how soldiers transition to life after active service.

The final section of this volume deals more specifically with the processes surrounding how military personnel cope with stress on their jobs. In the seventh chapter, Adam J. Vanhove, Tiffany Brutus, and Kristin A. Sowden review the state of the literature on interventions designed to improve soldier well-being in terms of its scientific rigor. In the final chapter, Ethan W. Gossett and P. D. Harms make the argument that there is a need to move beyond stress and well-being in both military and civilian literature and to address more directly the role of pain in terms of understanding the acute and chronic disorders often experienced by military personnel both during and after their service.

We are thrilled to bring these chapters together to address such a significant issue and are particularly proud that our authors were able to reflect successfully how stress and well-being shape the experiences of military personnel both in and out of the combat zone. We hope that these chapters will help shape the future research in both military and civilian research literatures. Finally, we would like to thank the authors for contributing to this volume, the reviewers who helped develop the chapters, and especially to the former and current service members who shared their insights concerning the topics that were needed to accurately reflect issues of importance to them as well as those who contributed as authors.

Peter D. Harms and Pamela L. Perrewé